Real
by WandererInTime
Summary: Charlie Drake finds himself in a world without the Doctor after the rise of the Time Lord's old enemy, the Mara. As the universe falls into chaos, he has a difficult decision to make as he comes to terms with reality. In the Nethersphere, renegade Time Lady Missy faces problems of her own. (Twelfth Doctor Adventures Part 9)
1. Never Say Nethersphere

**Author's Notes:**

**Part 9 in the Twelfth Doctor Adventures series, featuring Charlie Drake, following on from _Nightmares_.  
**

* * *

_**The story so far…**_

**Charlie Drake has been travelling through time and space in the TARDIS with the Doctor. ****Their fantastic adventures seemed too incredible to be real, and when Charlie wakes up in the Nethersphere, he soon realises that could well have been the case. Was the Doctor merely a figment of his imagination? And what does the renegade Time Lady, Missy, have in store for Charlie Drake in the afterlife?**

* * *

**WARNINGS: Much of this story takes place in the Nethersphere, Missy's 'afterlife' for humanity. As such, there could be some mentions of death.**

* * *

What happens after you die is a mystery. It's a mystery that both fascinates and terrifies people.

It's terrifying because we don't know. We don't know if we cease to exist or if we end up somewhere else – be it heaven or hell.

Of course, it does depend on what you consider 'you' to be. A soul? Your walking, talking body, driven by a brain and electrical signals? Memory, the sum of everything you ever recall happening?

If the answer is 'memory', as is sometimes conjectured, it may be possible to exist beyond death.

If everything a person can remember is remembered after death, that person may live. They may still be conscious, long after their body has turned to dust.

With the right technology, this is possible. It's far beyond present human capabilities, but other species have this knowledge.

The Time Lords have been doing this for aeons. They upload the minds of dying Gallifreyans to a hard drive, where their knowledge may be stored for the rest of time.

It has given them the power to bring the minds of the greatest Time Lords who ever existed back into reality.

It has given them the power to resurrect the dead.

Few species know of their ability to do this, and a Time Lord would never use that power.

Unless that Time Lord happens to be a renegade of Gallifrey. Someone who has rejected the rules and the bureaucracy of the Time Lords. And even then, only if that Time Lord was mad enough to try.

* * *

"We wish to speak to the Gatekeeper," the three spoke with one voice; a strained rasp produced by decaying lungs.

"Is that the Keymaster?" the woman responded.

She snapped her fingers, bringing the world into existence: a computer generated reality of an endless, sterile white corridor.

Her eyes were ablaze with a keen intelligence, excitement, possibly curiosity.

"We are the Servants of Chaos," the three aliens responded.

The things were deformed creatures. Aliens composed of stale, rotten flesh, oozing a viscous grey liquid from every pore.

It was as though they were corpses of undistinguishable alien creatures. Not creatures which had died or were dying, but creatures which had always existed this way, in a half-life of eternal disease.

"Servants of Chaos, hmm? Catchy name…" the woman mused, in a way which might be described as 'flirtatiously'.

"Why are you here?" Her chin rose sharply, nostrils flaring. It was a calculated gesture of a predator acknowledging the presence of another.

That little gesture of flirtation was a conscious flirtation with death.

"We are here for memories."

"Well, you're clearly not here for the view. There isn't one."

"We are correct in assuming you are the Time Lord known as 'the Master'?" the creatures uttered.

"Oh, please," the woman simpered, "call me Missy."

With a smirk, Missy turned her back on the monstrosities, and gestured at the featureless white doors around her.

"Who do you want?"

Her head snapped back to the monsters, lightning –fast.

"I am correct in assuming you are here for the memories of a particular… _human_? No questions asked?"

"We are here for the memories of Charlie Drake."

Missy glared at the aliens for a moment.

Her stern headmistress tone was twisted into a manic sing-song voice. That edge of malice remained under the disarming timbre:

"You may have to be a _tad_ more specific. The Nethersphere contains the minds of every human who has ever died throughout history. I mean, is that a boy's name, a girl's name? Or one of those adorable in-betweeny ones?"

The alien standing in the middle of the three stepped forwards. Its shredded flesh and oozing fluids, strung between the trio, stretched and warped as it moved.

Two feelers extended from its chest; the tiny limbs raised a holographic image of a seventeen year old Charlie, sporting an untidy mop of brown hair, and tired hazel eyes.

Missy scrutinised the image for a moment, before pulling out a device, the size of a smartphone, from the folds of her extravagant purple garments. She dabbed at the device's screen, humming a little tune to herself.

"Nope," Missy suddenly exclaimed, "No Charlie Drake."

"Explain!" the creatures gestured towards her, feelers grappling at the air with venomous ferocity.

"_Explain, explain!_" she mocked the creatures, "Just give me a minute, and I _will_."

Missy composed herself, checking her eyeliner in the reflection on her device.

"There are a couple of thousand humans with that name. But not the one you're looking for. I told you the Nethersphere contains the collective memories of every human who has ever died throughout history. Now, I see a couple of things that might have happened here. One, this human doesn't die. Or two, your Charlie Drake wasn't human."

The creatures seemed to broil with anger; the skin stretching between their bodies literally bubbling.

"You will help us acquire these memories. There is no other way to achieve our goals. We do not have the technology to extract him ourselves. The Testimony has refused to help us."

"Oh, that old cow…" Missy groaned under her breath, her eyes rolling so hard, her vivid irises vanished from view.

"If you do not assist us, we will destroy you."

Missy threw the creatures a contemptuous smile. "I'm very well aware of that. I can see that it would be… unwise of me to cross a creature like yourselves."

She curtseyed in a regal manner. It reminded her of the old days, when deals were made with daemons. They always required a little… tact.

"I do have a _teeny-weeny_ idea that might be of use to you."

A wicked smile crept across her lips.

Yes, she could have some fun with this.


	2. The Doctor

A blaring horn deafened him. It pierced his ears, reverberating around his head. He looked up, but he was frozen; a rabbit caught in the headlights.

Two bright yellow eyes glared as they bore down upon him. Closer and closer, closing the dark chasm between them, seconds away from impact. The thing roared at him again, but there was nothing he could do to move out of its path.

Whatever it was took him, and turned his world to darkness.

"Charlie!" a voice was yelling. "Charlie, stay with me!"

Charlie struggled to concentrate. He wasn't sure where he was. His brain was being pulled from world to world, unravelling in an attempt to string everything together.

He recognised the voice. A Scottish accent laced with concern, and more than a little frustration.

He was moving somewhere. He could hear people running, shouting. Charlie was lying down. In a bed, or on a table.

When he finally gathered the strength, he opened his eyes. The Doctor was standing over him – running alongside him.

Charlie looked around at the corridor racing past. The strip lights flashed overhead, leaving halogen trails as they zoomed across the sky like shooting stars.

He tried to sit up, but the Doctor pushed him back into the bed.

"I need you to stay calm, Charlie," the Doctor was saying.

That didn't help. Charlie immediately began to panic.

His senses threatened to overwhelm him. The beeping of equipment, the humming of air conditioning units, running footsteps and urgent voices. Phones ringing. People coughing. Sneezing. Talking.

Every noise was amplified tenfold. It was deafening.

Charlie gulped down a few short breaths, trying to stay in control. But he was drowning in the noise.

They turned a corner, and Charlie was being wheeled down another sterile white corridor. He was in a hospital.

For a moment, he caught sight of another familiar face. It was the woman. The woman in purple. She was holding a smartphone, her fingers poised over the screen as she watched him. Her eyes flickered momentarily towards him, before she turned away.

"Wait!" Charlie tried to cry out. "Doctor, wait!"

"Shh!" the Doctor urged him. "It's okay. You'll be okay, I promise."

Charlie looked at him – waiting a moment for his face to stop being blurry. The Doctor was wearing a white coat, for some reason. It looked a bit odd on him. No, the darker colours definitely suited him better. And there was a stethoscope hung around his neck. What did he need that for? Couldn't the sonic screwdriver do the same things?

"Doctor? What's happening?" he asked.

Another man was asking questions. The Doctor waved him away, and immediately turned his attention to Charlie.

"Don't worry about it. Try to stay calm."

"How did we get out?" Charlie urged him.

The Doctor's eyebrows twisted into a frown.

"Excuse me?"

"How did we get out of the temple?"

The Doctor bit his lip, and shared a worried glance with the woman running along on the other side of Charlie's bed.

Charlie couldn't quite fathom the Doctor's expression. Why didn't he just explain what happened?

"It's worse than I thought," the Doctor muttered.

The woman with the blonde hair tied up into a bun started speaking to him, very slowly and calmly. Frankly, it was rather patronising. "Charlie, I'm not sure if you understand. You've been involved in an accident."

Charlie stared blankly at her.

He turned back to the Doctor instead.

"What's going on?" he repeated.

"We're taking you to the operating theatre," the Doctor explained. "It really would be best if you stayed calm, and… stopped talking."

Charlie shook his head and tried to protest.

"Hush, Charlie."

He was pushed through a set of double doors, into a slightly darker room. When the doors closed behind the trio of people racing behind him, the corridor noise subsided.

He looked around. Sharp, metal instruments on a trolley. Medical equipment. Computers, huge white boxes of indeterminate usage. This must be the operating theatre.

Why was he in an operating theatre?

He looked down. There was blood everywhere – all over his arms, his shirt, his jeans.

Oh.

His heart sank.

_Oh, hell._

"Brave heart, Charlie," the Doctor was saying, as someone helped him into a green surgical gown.

"Doctor…?" Charlie uttered again.

The Doctor looked over, and gestured towards one of the staff. "Get him sedated."

"Yes, Doctor Foreman," the blonde woman responded.

Charlie looked between them in confusion. "Wait, what? Doctor _who?_"

The woman grabbed his arm. Charlie resisted furiously as a needle sliced through his skin.

"No… no, no, please…" Charlie uttered.

Venom surged through his veins. Within moments, his vision was hazy. He could feel his life force ebbing away.

_Doctor who…?_

The room fell apart. The blonde woman and the Doctor seemed to grow impossibly tall, drifting further away, yet closer at the same time.

"Doctor?!" Charlie's voice wasn't his. It belonged to someone else, and he could hear them speaking his words at him.

Now the bed had fallen away, and his body was suspended in zero-gravity, tangled in the white, sweat-soaked sheets.

Among the parcels of brown paper packaging suspended in the air, each tied up with white thread - and occasionally bursting with a fierce pop - the Doctor was leaning towards him, hushing him; a sound which turned into crashing waves.

The white foam horses splashed over his face, whilst the doctors and nurses danced around him; performing some kind of tribal ritual.

A switch flicked on, and the normal service of gravity was resumed. He rushed back towards his bed, and collapsed into the whirling depths his pillow; into the darkness…

The dark place of the inside. Where nothing made sense, but nothing mattered. It wasn't real, but it wasn't a dream, either.

Nothing really existed – certainly not colours. Only emotion. Fear. Fear of the end. Fear of the cold, and the dark. Yet it was so warm here, like he had just returned home.


	3. In-a-Gadda-da-Missy

The Servants of Chaos squirmed, withdrawing their crippled appendages.

"Explain your intentions," they hissed.

Missy nodded courteously. "Of course, my lords."

She mimicked a French accent, contemptuously uttering "listen very carefully, I'll say this… _only_ _once._"

She pulled open one of the many doors in the endless corridor, revealing an ornate window which overlooked a small garden.

"This is the garden of souls," she announced, leaning on the window frame, gazing out at the green grass. "It's where the dead drop in for a spot of afternoon tea."

"This is not a garden," the creatures growled, "This is a data processor."

"That's right," Missy continued, "the brain patterns of the dead are extracted telepathically and converted into a quantum binary format. The garden is, of course, merely a construct. A desktop background, shall we say, to ease the transition into the afterlife."

It tended to sell the whole 'heaven' thing, anyway.

"Explain how you intend to extract the memories of Charlie Drake!" the creatures demanded.

"I'm getting to that," Missy snapped, her smirk quickly twisting into a fierce glare.

"The technology of the Nethersphere enables us to extract simple brain patterns from any single point in space-time. The Time Lords used it to great effect during the Time War."

"We are aware."

"Extracting memories the Nethersphere cannot access is simply a case of reversing the process, and implanting a series of memories rather than extracting them. This template, this… _human, _can then act as a data harvester, remotely collecting the memories you require. When the human dies, we extract the memories as per the usual."

The Servants of Chaos seemed to hiss, perhaps conferring amongst themselves as they deliberated on Missy's plan.

She studied her fingernails for a moment, before casting a glance over at the monstrosities to see if they had finished chatting.

The creatures nodded in unison.

"Let it be done."


	4. Death, But Not As He Knew It

Someone was talking.

They were a few feet away, but not so far that Charlie couldn't hear them.

A voice; calm, succinct: "The extent of the damage to his brain is unknown. It could have severe long-lasting effects. That's if he survives."

"_What?!_"

"I'm sorry, but that's a distinct possibility I'm afraid you will have to prepare yourself for."

Charlie's eyes snapped open.

He was on a hospital ward. In a cold bed, sheets plastered to his skin.

Hideous plastic curtains with childlike shapes dotted over it caged him in. They weren't quite pulled all the way shut; he could see the Doctor talking to two people. One was hidden behind him, so Charlie couldn't see who it was. The other was his mum.

His mum!

Charlie sat up.

Untangling his legs from the bed, he stood up. His bare feet slapped against the cold floor. He had to go over and see them. See his mum and the Doctor.

Charlie felt a bit dizzy, and as he took a step forward, the room started to rotate.

His mum glanced over and saw him. Her eyes widened in alarm.

"Charlie!" she cried.

The Doctor turned around sharply, and rushed over, grabbing him by the shoulders.

"Come on, Charlie, get back to bed," he said softly, guiding him back to the clammy sweat-soaked sheets. "You have a severe concussion. That's no state to be walking around in."

Charlie stammered an apology, which the Doctor waved away.

"Are you okay?" the Doctor asked.

His mum had started fussing over him, but Charlie felt too tired to protest.

Charlie was aware of the person behind the Doctor stepping forward.

It took him a moment to work out who it was. Because his mind could barely comprehend the sight of them.

He had to blink; shake the vision away, just to make sure it was real.

It was Nate. Alive, and well.

Charlie swore loudly. His mum gasped.

Nate struggled to contain a grin. "He remembers me."

Nate's grin dropped when he saw Mrs Drake's expression of horror. Such language!

"Honestly, Mrs Drake," Nate mumbled wryly, "you should be used to it by now."

Charlie stared at his friend in disbelief, which, he realised, was unsettling Nate.

"I don't understand," Charlie muttered. "How can you be here?"

"Well, your mum gave me a lift…" Nate wasn't sure how to properly respond, and his eyes darted over to Mrs Drake for help.

She caressed Charlie's forehead as she enlightened him. "Nathan wouldn't let me come to see you without him."

"I don't… I don't understand," Charlie mumbled.

He felt something cold run from the corner of his eye, across his cheek, and over his ear.

He blinked, and was surprised to discover that he was crying.

"I wanted to save you, but… the Doctor said…"

"I don't remember," Charlie moaned. "I'm so confused."

"It's okay, Charlie." Nate grasped his hand. He felt Nate's dry fingers dusting his knuckles. Nate's touch was electrifying – like receiving a static shock unexpectedly. Charlie wrenched his hand away in distress, and a moment of clarity struck him.

"Oh my god," Charlie stared at the Doctor, astonished. "Did _you_ do this?"

Doctor Foreman's eyebrows knotted in concern.

"Did I… do what?"

"Did you save him? Is that what you did?"

"I'm sorry, Charlie," the Doctor sighed, shaking his head. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"But you're the Doctor!" Charlie exclaimed. "Did you go back in time and save him?"

He glanced at Nate again, who was gaping at him in shock. He looked terrified.

"I, uh… I think you've become a bit muddled up again," the Doctor muttered hesitantly.

"What do you mean…?"

"We've been through this before. My name's Doctor Foreman. I'm not _the_ Doctor, I am just _a_ doctor. I'm not a magic man with a time machine."

"But…" Charlie glared at him, puzzled. "How…?"

How could he say that? How could this man not be the Doctor? And how could he know about the TARDIS if he wasn't? And then, how in hell was Nate still alive?

"You've woken up a few times since we operated," the doctor explained. "So far, you haven't retained any memories of those moments. I fear you won't remember this, either. The effects of the accident have been far worse than any of us could have predicted."

Charlie's heart wrenched. He experienced a sudden wave of light-headedness as he tried to stammer out a word. He couldn't quite comprehend what he'd just heard.

Accident? What accident? There hadn't been an accident, had there?

He'd been in that temple. He'd been with the Doctor. He'd…

Something had happened. Something had wormed its way inside his head. Something had destroyed him. He had… _died._

He shouldn't even be here right now. Charlie gasped, as he re-experienced the sensation of his body convulsing, transforming. His fingers lost all feeling, as they bonded together, withdrawing into his limbs. A high pitched whine drilled through his eardrums, and he struggled to inhale the air in the room. He closed his eyes, trying to fight the sensations. It didn't help.

The musty, warm air made it difficult to breathe, and now he was panicking again. The Doctor – no, this... doctor – Doctor Foreman, was saying words at him. His mum sounded rather concerned. A heart rate monitor was going wild.

The weight of the world was crushing him; ropes pulled tight around his entire torso.

Nate's attention seemed to be flicking between him, and the ring he was wearing on his middle finger, which he was twisting nervously.

Time sped up.

The world whizzed past, faster and faster.

If he concentrated, Charlie could pick out snippets of what was happening – but only in brief, fleeting moments.

_"__Doctor who?"_

Doctor Foreman standing over him, holding him down, yelling for a nurse to help him, as Charlie screamed. _"__You are the Doctor! Stop pretending! Just stop! Stop pretending! Stop lying to me!"_

Nate sitting alongside him, squashed together on the hospital bed, showing him a funny video on his phone. Nate was grinning a stupid, boyish grin.

Then Nate was crying. Charlie's mum had her arms around him, hugging him tight, whispering: _"I know, I know…"_

The world was spinning faster and faster, sucked into a whirlpool, like the last vestiges of water vanishing down the plughole.

_"__Tell me the truth! You went back in time and stopped it from ever happening!"_

_"__I can't deal with it,"_ Doctor Foreman was saying, incensed, _"he's the worst patient I've ever had. I know it's not his fault, but the fact he's clung on to this ridiculous notion is unbearable!"_

_"__Doctor, he's awake,"_ the nurse said, shooting him a nervous look.

The Doctor span round, wide eyed and apologetic, but the damage had been done.

The look of realisation in the Doctor's eyes almost broke his heart.

_"__Brave heart, Charlie. Hold on, damnit!"_ the Doctor was shouting.

Then it went black.


	5. The Great Beyond

"Charlie? _Charlie!_"

Charlie gasped.

His mum was above him, her hands on his arms, trying to gently wake him.

He was on the floor; he'd fallen out of bed, dragging half the sheets with him.

"Charlie, I think you were having a nightmare," his mum said.

Charlie stood up, throwing the covers aside and adjusting his pyjama shorts.

He was in his bedroom, at home.

He was home. Back amongst his posters of space and bookcases crammed with worlds of science fiction.

The room was dark; it must have been early in the morning.

Charlie perched on the bed, and looked up at his mum. Even in the dim light, he could see her lines of worry.

He sighed. "I've been having a lot of those."

His mum let out an audible note of sympathy, and sat down next to him, pulling him close.

"What happened?" she asked gently.

"Well," Charlie hesitated, feeling really pathetic as he reflected on the nightmare. "I was in a hospital…"

"Mm-hmm, mm-hmm."

"The Doctor was there. But, I don't know. It was like it wasn't him… And then I… I think I died…?"

His mum was silent for a moment.

"Yes, that does happen sometimes," she muttered, thoughtfully.

Charlie frowned.

"What do you mean?"

His mum looked at him, with a consoling smile.

"People do sometimes get these echoes… of the moment they died."

"The moment I…" Charlie uttered, suddenly hit by the recollection with the force of a train. He was dead. This was the afterlife. "Oh yeah."

"You don't remember, do you?" his mum realised. "You keep forgetting everything that's happened since you died."

"No, I…" Charlie looked at him mum in alarm.

She smiled, and caressed his hair as she explained.

"Some days, you wake up and you remember. Other days… it's like it's your first day in the afterlife. You've forgotten the weeks, maybe months, you've been here. We think it was because of the injury."

"What injury? I don't…" Charlie trailed off.

"You had a brain injury. You couldn't remember anything properly after." His mum thought for a moment, staring at one of the pictures on the wall. "And I suppose, because of the way the afterlife works, your brain injuries stay with you after death."

"But hold on," Charlie interjected, "If this is the afterlife – is this is death, then…?"

He couldn't say it. He couldn't bring himself to ask.

He dreaded the thought of it, even though yes, it would have happened one day.

_Why was his mum here?_

"Yes," his mum seemed to read his thoughts – or perhaps he had asked before, but couldn't remember. "I passed away in my sleep."

"Oh my god…" Charlie almost cried. "Mum!"

"It's okay," his mum assured him. "It was quite peaceful. Just like going to sleep. Only, when I woke up, I wasn't in the real world anymore. I was here. And you were waiting for me."

"I was?" Charlie managed to croak. His throat was dry, for some reason. He wasn't crying, honest.

His mum smiled, and pulled him into another hug. "We're together again, now. That's all that matters. All that matters is that I will always love you – beyond life itself."

Charlie just sat there for a few minutes, wrapped in his mother's embrace and rubbing his eyes until they were sore.

"But that nightmare… It wasn't how I died."

His mum nodded. She seemed to understand.

"Sometimes, your mind makes things up. Tries to fill in blanks with something you're familiar with."

Charlie shook his head. Perhaps she didn't understand. Maybe she was just trying to be nice.

"No – it was in a completely different place."

"You dreamt about the hospital, yes? That's right. I was there with you."

"I didn't die in a hospital," he said. "I _know_ I didn't. And Nate was there!"

"As I said," his mum spoke patiently, "your mind sometimes tries to fill in the blanks. Sometimes the details get all mixed up. But that's what happened. You were in the hospital."

"I can't have been!" Charlie exclaimed, leaping to his feet. "I was with the Doctor. That was the last thing I remember!"

"Yes – Doctor Foreman."

"Not Doctor Foreman, mum," Charlie gesticulated furiously. "_The_ Doctor!"

"Oh," his mum shot him a puzzled look. "You don't mean that… superhero character you used to draw?"

"I…" Charlie frowned, pulling at his hair. "Well…"

"You made him up when you used to have nightmares," his mum reminded him gently. "It always made you feel better."

Charlie's frustration was stolen away as his chest tightened.

It was true. He had made up 'the man who makes things better' long before he met the Time Lord in the flesh. It was just a story. He had been too embarrassed to admit it to Sandra, his therapist, back when he was having all those visions of the Wraith.

"But…" Charlie shook his head. "How could I have made it all up? How can it not have been real?"

None of this made sense. He was certain that he'd been in that temple with the Doctor – and it had definitely been real.

How could it not be? All those fantastic adventures in the TARDIS had been so vivid.

"Oh, Charlie," his mum whispered. "I know it's difficult. Sometimes… people can't handle the thought they lived a wasted life. They can't rest in peace believing they never made a difference."

Charlie tried to utter a response, but he couldn't speak.

Was that it? Was that what his mum was saying? That the thought he'd squandered away his life was subconsciously plaguing him? And to make up for it, he'd dreamt up all those adventures with the Doctor? All those adventures where they'd saved people, stopped monsters…

His aghast expression must have been noticeable, because his mum sighed again and continued:

"But Charlie – you should be proud of what you did. You should be proud of who you were, and the life you lived," his mum insisted, "You were kind… you were selfless. You cared, deeply, about your friends."

Charlie realised that his shoulders were hunched up; his arms were curled tightly around his chest, and every fibre of his being was tense.

He wanted to relax, lets his arms drop by his side, but he was still shaking.

"If you made just one person's life better while you were alive…" his mum shrugged, smiling warmly at him, "Then it was worth it."

"Who's life?" Charlie mumbled, his voice strained.

He turned away, feeling his anger bubbling up inside. His eyes were stinging, and damnit, he was trying really hard not to cry.

"Mine," his mum insisted. "Nathan's."

"But I didn't make Nate's life better, did I? He… He still…"

"I know," his mum answered quietly. "But you _did_ make his life better."

"How can you say that? How can you know?"

"He told me."

"…What?"

"Nathan's here, too. This is the afterlife, Charlie. Everyone's here."

Charlie's mind raced.

There were so many things he needed to say to Nate. He needed to explain, to apologise, to tell him everything.

Charlie stormed out of his room, but he wasn't really sure where he was going, or why.

"Charlie?" his mum called after him, quickly getting up and following him as he raced downstairs.

Stairs. Hallway. The front door, where he'd first encountered the Doctor. The lounge. The tiny kitchen. All the details from each and every room in his old house screamed at him.

Everything was the same. It was exactly the same – but why? This wasn't paradise.

"Charlie, what's the matter?" his mum asked, placing her hand on his shoulder, as he came to a halt in the middle of the hallway.

Every detail was identical to his house back in the real world.

The same shoes stood in the boot rack, jackets hung from the hooks nailed to the wall. Even the old painting on the wall was the same.

"It's just…" Charlie stuttered, struggling to articulate his frustration. "_This_ is death?"

He gestured around. "You just get thrown back into life again? Are you sure this is _heaven?_"

His mum shot him a sympathetic look. "Charlie…"

"Sorry," he sighed, flexing his fingers agitatedly. He needed to stay calm, or he'd have a panic attack. "Sorry."

"Charlie, it's okay."

He nodded, momentarily averting his eyes from his mum's gaze.

Something else had occurred to him. If everyone who had ever died was here, then there was someone else he wanted to know about.

"Just… one more question," he said quietly, his voice still trembling.

"I know," his mum sighed, like they'd been through all this before – just like all those times the Doctor had to keep explaining about the rules of time travel to his friends.

"I've asked this before, haven't I?" Charlie deduced.

His mum nodded. She was waiting for him to ask nonetheless.

"Is my… _dad_ here?"

His mum looked away for a moment, her lips pursed.

"I've said this before. But I'll say it again, Charlie, love." She took a breath. "If your father is here, he can go straight to hell."


	6. All the Lost Souls

Charlie was stunned.

For starters, he'd never expected his mum to use a word like 'hell'.

He had often been curious about his dad. Who he was, and what he was like. He knew nothing about the man. He'd never really met him. Most of the time, he forget he actually had a dad.

But the way his mum spoke about him – if she ever mentioned him at all – made it sound like he was better off for never having met him.

It took Charlie a moment to realise where he had ended up. He had gone outside the house.

The feeling hit him with a lurch. The sight of the underworld was so surreal, and it made him feel sick.

There were hundreds of people crowding the streets. People dressed in all manner of clothing, from across time. Everyone who had ever died, from all across history – and perhaps from the future as well? There was barely enough room to move without someone jostling him, pushing him out of their way.

They all moved in silence; ghosts drifting aimlessly.

He was already regretting leaving the house.

The sky was still dark – but that was because there wasn't really a sky. It was just steel and concrete – an entire world folded in on itself. Billions of skyscrapers constructed inside a gigantic sphere.

What was he expecting to find out here? _Who_ was he expecting to find?

Charlie had no idea where he was. This wasn't his home. He was lost in the maze of streets in less than a few minutes. The crowds of people moving around were like waves pulling him this way and that.

He stumbled down a dreary uninviting alleyway, to escape the lost souls; a sense of dread and despair began trickling through him.

It was bitterly cold; he drew his jacket closer to him as he pressed back against a concrete wall.

There was no-one around he recognised. No one he could ask for help.

He was alone.

That was when he saw the woman again. Missy. She was standing in the main street, kept at a distance from the mindless passers-by, who were subconsciously giving her a wide berth. She was holding a gadget of some kind – he couldn't tell what she was looking at from this distance.

"You?" Charlie shouted.

Her eyes snapped to him. She knew he was there.

He began to fight his way through the hundreds of people moving between them, to reach the woman.

No, he didn't trust her. But maybe she could explain what was going on.

He was just a few metres away when she disappeared in a dazzling blue flash.

He made it to the spot she'd been standing in, but he was too late.

He cursed, and was immediately swept aside when a swarm of people moved in to recapture the circle of space Missy had left.

It wasn't until a large pod – like a giant, silver segmented beetle – pulled up alongside him, that the people were ushered away from him, and Charlie finally had some breathing space.

The tinted windows of the pod wound down.

A young man with short blond hair and an immaculate suit stuck his head out and grinned, displaying an almost too-perfect set of white teeth.

"Hello there!" he said brightly. "Charlie Drake?"

"Yeah…?" Charlie shot him a confused frown.

"A taxi has been ordered for you," he explained. The driver sounded rather apologetic in his tone, as if he were embarrassed for actually speaking.

"It has?"

"Highest priority."

Missy. It had to have been her - sending him somewhere else.

"Please, step inside," the driver uttered, as a segment of the vehicle's shell folded away.

The inside of the pod was a rather luxurious affair, with a circle of comfortable leather sofas and holoscreens. Charlie took a seat at the back.

The driver swivelled round in his seat as the shell of the pod sealed shut, leaving a strip of tinted glass offering a veiled view of the world outside.

"Um,"

Charlie pointed at the steering wheel, wondering why the driver was now shuffling towards him.

The man looked around, and quickly cottoned on to Charlie's concerns. He flashed another perfect grin.

"All our vehicles are self-driving. I'm just here to assist you."

"Oh, okay…"

"My name is Joey. I'm an AI interface."

Charlie nodded. "Yeah, I see."

That explained his near-perfect features and clipped, slightly inhuman manner.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"You tell me. This is your taxi."

Charlie shrugged. "I don't know."

"Home, perhaps, Mr Drake?" Joey suggested.

"Yeah."

"You don't really want to be out amongst all the lost souls at this time."

"The lost souls?" Charlie peered out of the windows at the blank, emotionless people walking around outside, as the pod began to glide smoothly down the street. "Who are they?"

"They're just minds without desires," Joey explained. "They expected nothing from death. They died alone. They lived for no-one. Died for no-one. There's nothing for them here."

"That sounds really depressing," Charlie grunted, sinking deeper into his seat.

"It's no matter. They're barely conscious. They're probably not even aware that they're dead."

"Probably?" Charlie queried, throwing the smiling AI a condescending glare. "No-one bothered to talk to them?"

"Many try. But the souls can't hear anything. Or they choose to ignore us."

"There's so many of them," Charlie muttered.

"There are. Rich and poor. Old and young. Atheist and religious. Gay and straight," Joey stated, "You're all equal on the other side."

Charlie pursed his lips, and stared at the floor.

Why was none of this offering a shred of comfort? And why was it so cold in here?

He glanced around the pod for a heater, or an air-con unit, but there wasn't one.

"But… they don't have anything to do? They don't have jobs, or anything?"

"No," Joey asserted. "People don't have jobs here. There's really no need. You're quite welcome to do as you please."

Charlie snorted, recalling his imprisonment in a virtual reality computer system on a planet far away. "Why do I feel like I've been here before?"

"Do you believe in reincarnation?" Joey asked, without a hint of irony.

"No, not really. Why?"

"Oh. Well, it's probably not that then."

Charlie fell silent, and spent the next five minutes trying to ignore Joey's incessant stare.

"Something on your mind, sir?" the AI asked.

"Yes," Charlie muttered, "A lot."

Joey coughed, with a hint of nervousness. "I won't repeat anything you say, if you need to share. I can always delete it from my memory."

Charlie sighed, opened his mouth once or twice before he decided to speak.

"It's just, right now, everything feels so meaningless. Like its all back to how it was before, when I was… still alive, I guess."

"Afterlife need not be a reflection on the life you lived, you know."

"No, but… I don't know. Without the Doctor… _I don't know._"

Joey gazed at him inquisitively. "Who is this Doctor?"

"He's… he's just a man who made things better. It's…" Charlie looked at the AI, and sighed, staring back out of the window again. "It's not important."

"Ah yes. Well, we all need someone like that, don't we?"

Charlie shook his head, and buried his face in his hands. He felt terrible. He had betrayed the Doctor right before the end.

"I think I screwed everything up before I died."

"Well, perhaps now's the time to set things right? Find your Doctor, and make amend-"

"He won't be here."

"Why not?"

"He's an alien."

"I see? Then it is rather unlikely you'll find him in the human afterlife."

Charlie looked up again, and nodded.

The pod slid to a halt, and the door opened up again.

Joey gestured outside with a curt smile.

"Well, we've arrived. It was a pleasure driving you, sir."

Charlie looked at him – noticed his forced smile.

"Are you just programmed to say that?"

"That is correct, sir."

"Right. Well, thanks anyway…"

Charlie climbed out.

"Before you go," Joey added, sticking his head out of the doorway. "If you decide it all gets too much…"

He pulled out a business card, and gave it to Charlie. "You can't die in the afterlife. You could well be here forever. For some, centuries of existence becomes more than they can handle."

Charlie examined the card. It had a phone number and a circular logo printed on it.

"We have ways… to take it all away," Joey spoke as sensitively as he could.

"Right."

"Enjoy the rest of your day, Mr Drake," Joey bade him a cheery farewell. Barely a second later, the pod had scooted away.

Charlie was alone on a walkway some distance above the ground, still dwarfed by concrete monoliths speckled with a thousand lights, like stars in the steel sky arching above him.

He turned to the door nearest to him. This was his house? It didn't look like his house from the outside. It looked like a tiny flat.

He pushed open the door.

Of course. It was bigger on the inside. Of course it bloody was.

His mum was standing in the replica of his hallway.

"Oh, he's back!" his mum exclaimed. "Speak of the devil."

She wasn't alone. Nate was there.

"Hey, Charlie!" Nate beamed.

Charlie was motionless for a moment, gaping at him in disbelief.


	7. Kinda Weird

Nate was standing in the hallway, just grinning at him – like nothing had changed. Like neither of them had died and were now in the afterlife.

Charlie was silent for so long, that Nate's grin started to slide away.

His mum seemed worried, trying to wordlessly ask him if he was okay.

Charlie walked over to Nate, and threw his arms around him, and pulled him into a hug which lasted a rather long time.

Nate lightly patted his shoulder, with clearly no idea on how else to respond.

For Charlie, this felt real. Nate felt real.

Nate laughed nervously. "…Okay?"

Charlie finally released him. He couldn't believe how good it was to see him again.

He had lived through months believing he would never see his best friend again.

Nate glanced at his mum, chewing on his lip.

"Uh… shall we go upstairs to talk? I think we might have a bit to catch up on."

Charlie nodded.

"Yes, well, I've got other things to do," his mum muttered, trying to make herself look busy. "They're still making Corrie, and I've missed a couple of episodes…"

She rubbed her arms, politely waiting for them to jog upstairs, before disappearing into the lounge and switching the TV on.

Charlie closed his bedroom door, blanking out the noise of sitcom chatter.

He leant back up against the door, thrusting a fist under his nose in an attempt to keep his emotions in check. His eyes were already stinging.

"Charlie…" Nate began. He was stood in the middle of Charlie's bedroom, a little unsure of what to do with himself.

"Jeez, Nate!" Charlie exclaimed.

This was it. This was what months of turbulent emotions had been leading up to.

"I've missed you. Every day since the day you died, I've missed you."

Nate was staring at him a little passively, the only movement a little nod here and there as Charlie spoke.

"I thought I'd never see you again!" Charlie was gesticulating wildly with his arms. "Mum made me go see a therapist because I got so bad. I was… I was prepared to go to hell and back just to find you again…"

Charlie shook his head, and shuffled over to the window. Outside was a view of the Nethersphere, thousands of skyscrapers closing in on them; in this claustrophobic afterlife that crushed the air out of his lungs. If this was even air he was breathing now. He turned away from it.

"I guess it worked," Charlie muttered, staring anywhere in the room where Nate wasn't standing. "I think… I guess what I'm trying to say is… I really _don't know_ what to say now."

"I… I know, Charlie," Nate said calmly. "I know all this. You've… 'reset' before. It's just…"

He took a breath, and looked at him imploringly, his shimmering blue eyes betraying his emotions. "Please don't be angry with me, Charlie."

"I'm not," Charlie replied quietly. "I'm just… happy to see you again."

Charlie shook his head, and stared at Nate. His brow creased; the muscles in his face twitching nervously.

"Why? Just… _why?_"

Nate shook his head. He muttered something about having talked about this before.

"Nate," Charlie implored. He was desperate. He was desperate for an answer – to know, to understand. "I think you at least _owe_ me an explanation."

"I don't," Nate returned sharply, his features twisting momentarily into a scowl. "Actually, Charlie. I don't owe you that at all."

He raised his hands, as if to grab something, but his fists clenched around thin air.

"I regret a lot of things, Charlie. This was one of them. I don't think I can ever get over what I did. But I'm trying, Charlie. I'm trying."

Charlie snapped his eyes shut for a second. What the hell was he doing? Why were they getting this frustrated with each other?

"I'm sorry."

They sat down for a moment; Charlie swinging gently side to side on his swivel chair, Nate perched on the edge of the desk.

"We should have talked more," Charlie mumbled. "I should have seen something was wrong. I should have done something. We shouldn't have argued – and I shouldn't have avoided you because of it."

Nate was fixated upon his shoes. He was listening, but he wasn't saying anything back.

Charlie thumped the arm of his chair. "I was too caught up in what was important. What I _thought_ was important… But it wasn't at all, was it? I'm really sorry, Nate. I'm really sorry…"

Nate looked up, and offered him a half-smile. "You're my best friend, Charlie. You've got nothing to be sorry for."

He rubbed his eyebrows, a little agitated. "Could we just… forget about it? I don't think I want to talk about this anymore."

Charlie nodded. "Yeah! Yeah, okay."

Charlie hastily agreed, because he didn't think their conversation could become any more uncomfortable.

An overwhelming silence grew between them, and Charlie realised he'd left it too long to try and say something else.

Nate pulled a rolled-up magazine from his back pocket, and dropped it on Charlie's desk.

"I actually came round to give you this. It's the sci-fi zine about the two space agents who solve crimes and battle supervillains. I guess you might have to read the other ones again first, or'st it's not gonna make sense…"

"Okay," Charlie picked up the cover; it showed two armed space-suited agents, heroically battling a giant reptilian cyborg, on what appeared to be a space-station breaking apart with the customary spectacle of explosions. "This actually looks pretty cool."

"Do you remember when we used to do those comics about the private detectives?" Nate asked.

"Of course I do…" Charlie muttered as he flicked through the comic in front of him.

He had spent hours drawing a ton of barely comprehensive scenes featuring his and Nate's likenesses as a team of investigators who were supposed to solve crimes – but always got side-tracked when aliens would appear in the middle of the story.

"It was mainly you though," Nate added, grinning. "I was the dashing, but useless sidekick."

Charlie smirked.

Nate cracked another joke, and Charlie laughed. For a while, they both forgot everything that they'd been through. For Charlie, there was a glimmer of hope that things could almost be normal. That he could actually live a new life here.

Perhaps death wasn't the end of everything. Perhaps it wasn't doom and gloom, spending the rest of eternity roasting in the fires of hell, or whatever.

Before he knew it, they were discussing the plot of another crazy adventure. Charlie sketching a spaceship on a scrap of paper, Nate animatedly describing a couple of the characters he'd thought of.

And within half an hour, they were furiously mashing buttons on Charlie's gamepads as they fought as strange alien characters in an arena. It was a game he'd owned in real life, and it was weird playing it again now.

It felt like he was back to his old life – in the afterlife. His life before the Doctor. The games used to be fun, but now it felt empty and meaningless. Like nothing would ever be exciting again without the Doctor in the TARDIS landing on a new world in the past or in the future.

How could you go back to any kind of life after that?

And all the while, as he beat Nate's orc with a half-remembered power-up combo, it really bothered him that nobody else thought the Doctor was real. Nobody else thought it had happened.

"Have I… told you about the Doctor?" Charlie asked, his concentration slipping.

"Yeah. Yeah, you have," Nate uttered, stealing a glance at him for a second – still too caught up in the intense on-screen battle to look away for longer. "Time machine… aliens… that sort of thing."

Charlie died. His frail, blue wizard was knocked off the edge of the platform.

He chucked the controller down on his desk. Nate looked at him, puzzled.

"You don't believe he's real, do you?" Charlie asked. "You think I'm making it up."

He shot the question like it was an accusation – and Nate was a little stunned.

"No, I…"

"You don't," Charlie grunted. "You think I keep lying about it."

"I… I want to believe you, Charlie," Nate insisted. "But _you_ don't even remember him."

"Yes I do!"

"No," Nate shook his head. "I mean it's not in your memories. You've showed me, and those memories - they're not there."

Charlie blinked. "What's that supposed to mean?" he muttered sharply.

"No, look…" Nate sighed, and rubbed his eyebrows again. "Can I… can I tell you something?"

"Yeah… anything!" Charlie uttered with as much sincerity as he could muster.

"It's going to sound kinda weird…" Nate began. "This is actually something I've never shown you before."

"Okay…?"

Nate leapt out of his chair, and closed the game.

He shut his eyes for a moment, and reached out to the screen, placing his fingertips on the monitor.

Charlie was about to ask him what he was trying to do – then remembered where he was. He waited patiently for something to happen.

"There!" Nate muttered, his eyes suddenly wide open.

Charlie's computer screen crackled with static for a moment, and then the all too familiar image of the school lockers.

"What's this?" Charlie asked.

"They're my memories," Nate explained. "I… oh yeah – you won't remember. We can re-watch our memories like this."

"How…?"

"Uh…" Nate scratched his head. "We don't really know. It's kind of an intuitive thing, I guess? _You_ figured it out before I did."

"Oh, really?"

"Anyway, watch this." Nate turned back to the screen, as it played out one of his memories.

Charlie watched, wondering what he was supposed to be looking for, as Nate, in his memory, fumbled through his locker.

Nate slammed the metal door shut, glancing around – doing a double take when he saw Charlie standing at his own locker, flicking through a textbook, apparently lost in the pages.

It was quite surreal, Charlie thought, watching himself in someone else's memories. He couldn't remember this himself, but it could have been any one of the hundreds of times he'd opened his locker.

Right now, Nate was knelt on the floor, completely rigid, watching the memory play out with apprehension.

In the memory, Nate turned to the tall lad standing next to him, looked him up and down. He was smirking at whatever he was watching in his phone. Charlie recognised him. They used to be in the same form.

"Wait, is that Adam? Adam Mackenzie?"

"Yeah," Nate grunted.

Charlie returned his attention to the screen.

Nate shot another look at Charlie. This really was weird. Maybe Nate was wondering if he should have gone over to talk. A glance at Nate's watch, and a curse muttered under his breath, told him he didn't have the time.

He turned back the other way, to head down the corridor towards the science labs, and Charlie jumped at what he saw.

There was a creature looming over him – right there in the middle of the school corridors.

It was a grotesque _thing, _like a cluster of corpses melting together.

Nate froze, mid-step. Charlie was glued to the screen, trying to see what the creature was. He couldn't identify any human features. Definitely alien.

_"Remember the part you play, Nathan Slate,"_ the creatures rasped. It had the voice of a hundred dying things.

Beside him, Nate was trembling.

"What was that?" Charlie breathed.

"I don't know…"

"The time is near," the creatures hissed, their sinuous appendages curling towards him. "You will do as is instructed of you. Else you will suffer the consequences. Do not forget that you are easily replaced. You are insignificant in the universe."

What Charlie didn't know, was that these creatures whispered to Nate every day, every night. They taunted him, reminded him that he was nothing special; a plaything they could use as they wished.

He had come to fear them in his nightmares, so much so, that every waking moment was filled with dread at the prospect of seeing them again.

_"What the hell are you staring at?"_ Someone growled.

Adam stepped through the monster, and the apparition dissolved. He clearly hadn't seen it. Nobody else had, apart from Nate.

_"I… nothing. Sorry,"_ Nate muttered, quickly hurrying past, shying away from Adam's repulsed glare.

Nate swiped the memory away, and Charlie's computer switched back to the desktop background of the planet Jupiter, and its moons.

Charlie stared blankly at it for a minute, processing what he'd just seen.

"They were always there, Charlie. All through my life," Nate admitted, his voice shaking.

Charlie turned to him, very concerned by Nate's fears.

"This is why I want to believe everything you said about the Doctor," Nate said, his wide blue eyes shining, fraught with unease.

He desperately wanted Charlie to understand. And after everything he had seen with the Doctor, he did. He believed his friend. He believed that these creatures were something real, something he could fight. Something he could put a stop to.

"Nate… why did you never tell me?" Charlie asked.

Nate shook his head, ashamed. "They said I had… schizophrenia, or something. They said it was a hallucination. They said it was all in my head."

"But it clearly wasn't!"

Nate sighed. "I don't know that for sure. The memories… these are only… what our brains recorded. I saw them, but they might not have been _real_."

"No…" Charlie uttered. "They must have been. I've seen things like this, Nate. With the Doctor. Are you still seeing them?"

Nate shook his head.

"But we can still find out what they were!" Charlie exclaimed, becoming more animated as he considered what he was up against. "And what they were up to – and why only you could see them."

"Um, Charlie?" Nate ventured.

Charlie look up, startled, when he realised that there was a girl in his room.

A very pretty one, he might add, but nonetheless, she had wandered in unannounced, and had apparently been watching him for a few minutes.

"He's not talking about _the Doctor_ again, is he?" she groaned, with a dry smile, and folded her arms.

Charlie shot her a puzzled look. Who was she? Why was she here?

"Hi Nate," the girl added.

"Hey, Sam," Nate mumbled back, his gaze dropping to the floor.

Charlie looked between the two of them.

Nate clearly recognised the girl, but he had never seen her before in his life.

"Who…?" Charlie began.

"She's your girlfriend, Charlie," Nate sighed.

"My… _girlfriend?_" he uttered in astonishment. "I have a girlfriend in the afterlife?"

"Yeah."

"Oh," Charlie said quietly, at a loss for anything else to say.

"Reset?" Sam asked.

"Yeah," Nate replied.

Charlie got up, and peered at her in confusion.

The girl had dark eyes, with subtle black winged eyeliner drawing him in. Her long hair swayed gently, as if caught in a breeze. There was something about her: a supernatural quality, which was captivating.

"Okay, Charlie," Sam said softly. Her voice was silky, almost unnaturally so. It sounded as luxurious as velvet chocolate. "I know you don't remember who I am, but you can trust me."

She grabbed his hands; her palms felt cold, and slimy. The exact opposite of what he expected her skin to feel like.

"I am here for you, and I always will be. Maybe there's a little part of you, deep down, that knows that?"

_No_, Charlie thought. There certainly wasn't that. She was completely unfamiliar to him.

"Er," he croaked. "I…"

Charlie shook his head, and pulled away.

"What's the matter, Charl?" Sam asked sweetly.

_Charl?! h_e exclaimed inside his head. _I let her call me Charl?_

"No, I can't deal with this," he mumbled, retreating into his room. The back of his legs struck the side of his bed, forcing him to sit down awkwardly.

"_Are_ you okay?" Nate asked as well.

_Am I okay? _What could he say? _No, not really. I'm dead. So are you, and now I have a girlfriend. What the hell has been happening?_

"Get out," he growled.

Nate looked at Sam, his features contorted somewhere between a scowl and a plea.

Neither of them moved.

"Both of you," Charlie spat sharply. "Just get out. Leave me alone."

"He needs a bit of time," Sam instructed Nate. "Come on."

She left, and Nate followed.

The door clicked shut quietly behind them, and Charlie was alone.

He sat in cold silence for a minute, before burying his head in his hands, blocking out the world around him.

He could feel his legs shaking; a dense knot burned in his chest, making him quiver like a neutron star.

Even as he threw himself on his bed, he couldn't rest in peace. There wasn't a position he could curl into that was even remotely comfortable.

That night, if indeed it was ever night here, he couldn't get to sleep. He didn't know if it was because he was dead – and didn't need to sleep.

Or if it was because he was worried about Nate. He couldn't help him in life – in all that time he'd been plagued by those terrible creatures.

Or if it was the Doctor. he was terrified by the thought he might never get back to him. He would never see the TARDIS again. And nobody else believed the Doctor even existed. He knew Nate wanted to, but Charlie wasn't convinced he truly believed.

Had he really made it all up, just for some pathetic sense of validation? Did Charlie Drake really believe that his life was worthless without the Doctor?

Or perhaps it was merely the restless souls outside the window, howling and groaning all through the night; the ghosts of the dead that haunted the underworld.


	8. Masterful Meddling

_Back once again, it's the renegade Master…_

Missy glared at the holographic miniature of Nathan Slate, boredom slapped across her features.

The hologram was contained within a flickering blue sphere, hovering above the tiny limbs of the Servants of Chaos, making it look rather like a birthday balloon.

"What is happening?" the Servants of Chaos asked. "We have relayed psychic messages to the data harvester. It is unresponsive."

"Of course not, it's a human," Missy smirked. "You'll have to wait 'til he's dead."

"The bioengineered specimen is not yet saved to your database?"

"No," Missy snarled. "These things take time."

"_You_ are a Time Lord," the creatures growled, the pockets of pus barely contained within their decaying flesh were bubbling in rage.

"Yes, exactly. Which means I have a greater understanding of the subtleties one must apply to the delicate weave… that is the fabric of reality," Missy announced grandiosely. An extravagant gesture every now and then wouldn't hurt.

"We can accelerate the process," the creatures hissed.

Missy glared at the creatures.

"Accelerating the process endangers everything," she snapped. "Pull the plug too soon, and the brain scans will be incomplete. No memories. No Charlie Drake."

"Very well. We will take our leave. But…" the monsters paused, struggling to draw a failing breath, "we shall return."

The Servants of Chaos blinked out of existence, as they withdrew their mental connection from the Nethersphere.

"Dear god," Missy groaned, her shoulders sagging dramatically. "Do they always talk like that? How have I never noticed?"

She pulled an iPad from one of her larger inside pockets, examining the progress of her plan, displayed in the intricate and poetic circular forms of Gallifreyan text.

"Did _I_ talk like that?" she suddenly wondered, glaring into the middle distance.

"I wouldn't like to comment," Joey said quietly.

Missy swung round, surprised to see one of her AI avatars standing behind her.

Those things were so irritating. Always far too eager to please her. They were meant to be lifeless projections, but they seem to have acquired enough sentience to fear her.

Sighing, Missy slid the tablet away, and began to walk through her palace of art deco columns; hundreds of skeletons sat in fluid containers, stretched around the place like tombs.

The dead patiently waiting.

She stroked the glass of one of the tanks. The skeleton turned its eerie skull towards her, its mouth hung open in a silent scream in the dark water. Her lips curled into a sneer. The Doctor's birthday presents were all wrapped up. _Canned, _you might say.

"The Doctor," Missy intoned, turning to the AI, who had shuffled along beside her as she drifted along the corridor. "He's what this is all about."

The Doctor was a Time Lord whose presence could be felt on countless worlds. He was unique in all of time and space. Without him, what was the point in anything?

This was exactly what was going through Charlie's head right now. The Doctor had shown him planets beyond the comprehension of his tiny human mind. The Doctor had changed his life. He could no longer accept a world without the Doctor.

Even Missy, though she was reluctant to admit it, couldn't bear to imagine a universe without the Doctor.

"He's the reason these… Servants of Chaos have come for some _pointless_ human's memories."

She knew there was a chance that these creatures might want to kill him. She was pretty sure the Doctor could handle it himself, but she wanted to make sure no-one else had the satisfaction of orchestrating his final defeat (_That_ was between the two of them). Keeping a close eye on the situation was most certainly on the cards.

"I'm afraid I don't understand?" the AI ventured, blinking in a pre-programmed expression of confusion.

Missy gestured towards a large grey sphere blinking with dozens of red lights.

"This device, the Nethersphere," Missy muttered indifferently, "Your… _reality_. Is one very large, and very powerful storage device. All the minds in there are stored for temporary processing whilst the bodies are upgraded."

Joey frowned, looking around at the spookily lit tanks that lined the walls.

Actually, Missy reconsidered, not all of the minds were for processing. She'd hopped into the future to grab a couple of them to grill them about the Doctor.

They wouldn't actually be needed later on, so those ones could just be deleted whenever.

"I… do know this," Joey uttered.

"So, Charlie Drake…?" Missy prompted him.

"His mind is here for processing. His mind is already in the Nethersphere. Which means you lied to the Servants of Chaos?"

"That is correct."

"But they would kill you if they knew?" Joey almost gasped in shock.

"Naturally," Missy smirked, waving a hand dismissively. "So what do I do?"

"You… delete the memories they requested?"

"…Leaving a gaping wide blank in the boy's memories between the moment he finds himself in a spot of danger, and the moment he dies." Missy pouted in a moment of deep thought. "A _tad_ suspicious, don't you think?"

"You replace the memories?" Joey reasoned. "You patch it up with data from another source – from the data harvester?"

Missy nodded. "Nathan Slate."

What Charlie didn't know was that Nate had never really existed. He was just a construct.

A programmed avatar specifically designed to interact with Charlie Drake and gather data on him.

He was a mere human adolescent inserted into the lives of two humans whose memories had been altered so they would take care of him.

Missy didn't know who they were. She didn't care. She had just plucked two humans at random from the street, implanted the memory that they had been in love, gotten married and had a child.

Wouldn't it just be hilarious if Charlie found out his lifelong best friend wasn't even a real person? Wouldn't that just tear his whole world apart all over again?

It was so brilliant - the resulting bootstrap paradox was almost worth the damage.

"You run a series of simulations, allow the characters stored in the database to interact, generate more memories _without_ the Doctor," the AI gushed, excitedly reeling off all the possibilities garnered from Missy's plan.

Missy threw her head back and chuckled. This was fun.

"You fool the Servants of Chaos." Joey looked up at her, his expression switching to a puzzled stare. "But how can you be sure this will work?"

"Calculate probability of success," Missy ordered, putting on a stilted, computer-friendly tone.

"Fifty-four percent," the AI returned after a moment of consideration.

"Throw in just a smidgeon of absolute raging genius…?" Missy suggested.

"But that's… not a quantifiable modifier?"

"The answer is, I don't know," Missy snarled, her playful tone vanishing as suddenly as it had been acquired. "I will _make_ it work."

"Are you sure this is the best course of action?"

Missy glared at the avatar, a thousand years of hatred, and fury, and cruelty, tunnelling into the AI's core.

"So what, in your professional opinion, is the _'best course of action'?_" Missy growled, "Bearing in mind that I will kill you if I don't happen to like what you say."

Joey gulped, his face rendering in a paler shade of white. "I just think… that it is a little convoluted a plan."

Missy considered this for a moment, and offered him a sweet smile.

_"Say something nice."_

Joey's eyes widened in shock. He started to back away, his voice tremoring in genuine terror. "Oh, no. _Please_. I may be a mere holographic projection, but I feel I have reached… a sentience, a form of existence. I am more than just an interface – I am-"

_Whumph!_

Missy had enjoyed watching the red dust settle on the polished marble floors of her domain, but the pretty shapes only held her fascination for so long.

She slid her little killing toy back into her jacket.

True, her ruse might not work. But that was a risk worth taking.

The Doctor was her oldest and dearest friend. They had frolicked through the universe, snapping at each other's heels. They had been to the end of time together, and they had danced around the burning supernovae right at the very beginning.

It would all be for nothing if these creatures destroyed him.

But she knew something was missing. She had overlooked one vital factor in the proceedings. One ingredient in her soufflé.

That made the Master angry.

Nonetheless, she had more pressing concerns. The Servants of Chaos were getting impatient. She needed to make a move now.


	9. Rewind

Eventually, Charlie gave up on trying to fall asleep.

He didn't know what time it was. There weren't any clocks or watches. Even the timestamp on his computer was blank.

Yet another reminder that he was in the afterlife; that concepts like time and aging no longer seemed to exist.

He couldn't stop thinking about the Doctor. It was the one thing that kept coming back to the forefront of his mind above everything else. How could he prove that he was real?

A thought struck him, and he turned to the computer screen. How had Nate shown him his memories before?

Charlie reached out to the screen, closed his eyes, and pictured the Doctor.

He imagined the Doctor's ancient features throwing him a puzzled glare, as he attempted to fathom some incomprehensible human mystery.

The excitement in his voice as he tinkered with a fantastical alien contraption, taking readings with the sonic screwdriver.

The fire in his eyes as he confronted an alien monstrosity, promising never to back down as he fought against injustice.

Charlie heard the Doctor's voice; his eyes snapped open.

His heart sank when he saw the hospital rooms.

He was staring at an image of the Doctor Foreman he had seen in that nightmare. A plain old man in a grey shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, currently relaxing in a swivel chair in an office.

He was toying with a biro, clicking and twisting it absent-mindedly, like the Doctor sometimes did with the sonic screwdriver.

They shared the same face, but this man was not _the _Doctor.

_"Very good." The doctor smiled warmly. "I'm feeling very optimistic about your recovery. You should be proud of yourself."_

_"I am… I guess," Charlie answered._

In the memory, Charlie was sat in a chair opposite the doctor, his fingers nervously locked together, coiling around each other like a tangle of slithering snakes.

Watching his hands on the computer screen, Charlie realised he was unconsciously doing the exact same thing, and laid his itching palms flat on his desk instead.

_"Now, let's go through it again." Doctor Foreman said gently. "Tell me what happened."_

_"Um," Charlie hesitated for a moment._

Listening to the sound of his own voice was weird. He hated the sound of it. He sounded pathetic, childish.

_"There was a car." He drew a sharp breath. "I didn't see it in time before I crossed the road."_

Doctor Foreman's stern gaze locked onto him through the computer screen.

_"That's right," he uttered calmly, insistently. "That's exactly what happened. It's important that you accept what _really _happened."_

Charlie pushed himself away from the screen, away from the 'memory'. He stood up, paced the room, his fingers clawing at his hair.

This was wrong. That memory didn't happen. He was meant to be travelling the universe in the TARDIS. They were chasing shapeshifting alien kittens, or fighting off an infestation of Krynoid in a space laboratory.

But still, the doctor and Charlie were still recounting this mundane, ordinary memory in the background.

_"Now, is that all that was worrying you?"_

_"Not… not really," Charlie answered. _

_"Well, what is it?"_

_"It scares me…" _

Charlie turned back to the screen. His memory counterpart was glancing nervously at the ugly hospital floor; at the sickening blue and green swirls speckled with glitter.

_"What does?" the doctor leant forward in his chair. "Charlie?"_

_"It scares me that I can barely remember anything. I – I don't know what's real anymore."_

_Charlie glanced up at the old man's serious expression._

_"I understand," he said quietly, "It's going to be a long time before your brain recovers – before you can confidently recall long term memories. Brain cells don't just…" his thoughts wandered for a moment, searching for the right word. Then Doctor Foreman's eyes locked onto him through the screen. "…_regenerate_."_

"No," Charlie growled, angrily stepping towards the computer, ready to shut it off.

_"Um… can I go?" Charlie asked._

_"Of course!" the doctor grinned. "But before you do go, I just want you to know…"_

_He looked about for a moment, struggling to vocalise his thoughts precisely. "I'm very proud of you, Charlie."_

_"Thanks," he mumbled._

_Charlie stood up, and turned to the door, glancing at the pane of frosted glass etched with Doctor Malcolm Foreman's name._

_"Brave heart," the Doctor called after him, as he stepped out of the office._

Those two words were like gunshots.

Charlie froze for a second, his unease escalating.

This couldn't be true. This couldn't have happened.

He reached out to the screen again, rewinding his memories, until he found the exact day and time he was supposed to meet the Doctor. The night he encountered the Wraith. The night he started running.

He watched the scene unfold, his heart pounding. But nothing happened. The Doctor wasn't there. Charlie just slept through the entire night, barely comprehensible dreams fading in and out of view.

It was all gone. The Doctor was gone.

All that time he'd spent with him on those amazing adventures. He could remember it all, but it simply wasn't there in his memories on the screen.

Where was he? Where was the Doctor?

Charlie almost roared at the screen in frustration.

There had to be something. Some evidence that he had really travelled in the TARDIS. Some evidence he had seen the future, been to the Earth's past…

"Oh…!" Charlie exclaimed, running his hands through his hair as a revelation hit him. Maybe that was it!

Charlie pulled the keyboard towards him, and started typing, an ounce of hope resurfacing in him.

He researched _Alan Turing, Cambridge, 1931_. There had to be some snippet of information about their meeting. About their encounter with a homicidal robot. A hint that it had really happened.

Charlie looked for hours, hunched over his desk, chin resting on his arm, scouring countless webpages – but there was nothing. Not a single shred of evidence. He only ended up reading about the awful things that had happened to him.

Without warning, the screen turned white.

"What?" Charlie cried, sitting bolt upright, immediately hammering on the unresponsive keyboard.

The woman's face appeared on the screen. Missy.

Charlie frowned. What was going on? How had she done that?

"I know what you're doing," she snarled. Her furious eyes were narrow and unblinking, reptilian, almost.

"What I'm doing? I'm not doing anything!" Charlie protested, raising his hands to prove his innocence.

"Shut up!" Missy snapped.

Charlie stumbled backwards in alarm as Missy stepped through the screen and materialised in his room.

"What the _hell?_" Charlie spluttered.

She stormed up to him, and leant in _extremely_ close; her bared teeth inches from him.

"You know _exactly_ 'what the hell'," she whispered.

Charlie pulled away from her, breaking off Missy's invasion of his personal space.

"It's because I'm looking for the Doctor, isn't it?" Charlie guessed.

Missy turned her nose up, but didn't respond.

"That means he _is_ real," Charlie concluded, gritting his teeth. "I don't know why he's not in my memories, but he is real. I _know_ he is."

Missy smirked.

"_So_ plucky," the woman murmured. "No wonder he liked you."

"What was that?" Charlie pressed, advancing a step towards her.

She glared at him, mirroring his advance. "Despite _very clear_ evidence to the contrary, you seem to be convinced of a certain delusional fact."

"Like _what?_" he retorted.

She shrugged, flicking her hand in a dreamy, absent-minded gesture. "That your life was in some way meaningful."

"And what's that supposed to mean?" Charlie snapped. He could feel himself getting angry. Missy was deliberately infuriating him. She clearly knew everything, but she enjoyed keeping her secrets and teasing him with the merest hints of the truth.

She smiled, tight-lipped, like a serpent. Her smoky eyes locked onto him. "You don't matter, Charlie. Can't you see that?"

Missy radiated an energy – an alien aura like the Doctor had. Only her aura was more assured, closed off; she believed she was superior to everyone and everything around her.

"Yeah," Charlie breathed, his mouth curling in defiance. "I can see that. I can see that you're wrong."

"I don't care about you, Charlie." Missy didn't even bother to contain her mirth this time. "I really don't. I'm only doing this to… _save_ the Doctor."

"So the Doctor _is_ real? Tell me he's real?!"

Missy rolled her eyes. "Yes, the Doctor's real."

"I knew it," Charlie growled. "So why has everyone been lying to me? Why are my memories wrong?"

Missy sighed. "The very fact that you've met the Doctor makes you dangerous. So I've doctored your memories."

Charlie frowned, his mind racing. "So that guy in my dream – the one who looks exactly like him. He's…?"

"Just a construct." Missy threw Charlie a wry smile. "I thought that was a nice touch. Doctor Foreman? Not that you'd get it."

"But… why? I don't understand."

Missy straightened up, and returned to her serious headmistress-like composure.

"Okay, shall we put it into simpleton terms so you can understand?"

Charlie grunted. "You don't need to be patronising."

"_Of course not_, dear," she mocked him. "So let's pretend that, like the Doctor, I'm dealing with some very, very bad alien monstrosities. If they get your memories of the Doctor, they could do _unspeakable_ things."

"I see…?" Charlie muttered, turning his attention away from Missy, as he began to dream up a plan. "What are these creatures? Can we fight them?"

"They are called the Servant of Chaos. And no, we can't fight them." Missy's staccato enunciation emphasised her irritation. Of course she had thought of this already.

"The Doctor would find a way," Charlie pointed out.

Missy thrust her hands on her hips. "If I was confident the Doctor could '_find a way', _I wouldn't be so concerned, dear.

"I'm just looking out for my friend, really," she added with a shrug.

Charlie frowned again, his scepticism obvious as he crossed his arms. This woman came across as a lot of things, but friend of the Doctor was not one of them.

"You're his friend?" Charlie challenged her, "Really? The Doctor has loads of friends. I've heard a lot about them. And he's never mentioned _you_."

Missy's chin twitched dismissively. "I didn't say he liked me."

"So what you're saying," Charlie grasped, ignoring Missy's strange remarks, "Is that you've altered my memories to remove all traces of the Doctor?"

"_Finally,_" Missy groaned. "He understands. Only took a couple of ice ages. God, humans are slow."

"And these creatures? Are they the same as the ones that Nate used to see? Were those… the Servants of Chaos?"

"As it happens, yes," Missy conceded. "They've trying to communicate with him. They mustn't, or they'll uncover my"- she took a sharp breath -"teensy deception."

"But they've left him alone, now," Charlie recalled. "He's not seeing them anymore."

Missy smiled, which sent a shiver down Charlie's spine.

"What makes you think they've left him alone?"

"Because he…" Charlie trailed off, cursing himself quietly.

"Lied?"

"Then we have to stop them," Charlie decided. "The Doctor might not be here. But that isn't going to stop me from helping _my_ friend."

Missy raised her hand, in an admonishing gesture. "No."

"I'll stop these monsters on my own if I have to," Charlie warned.

"Mmm…?" Missy narrowed her eyes, pretending to consider this for a second. "_No_…"

She pulled a mobile phone-like gadget from the folds of her purple jacket.

"You see, I rather think you've been missing the glaringly obvious."

Charlie shook his head, with a shrug. "I don't think so."

"No?" Missy mused, holding her phone up, as though taking a selfie.

"Because you've just told me these creatures want my memories of the Doctor, which you've erased."

"Yes…?"

"But," Charlie reasoned, "I can still remember him."

Missy lowered the device for a moment. "Go on…?"

"And," Charlie chuckled to himself, trying to present a disarmingly nonchalant air, "I just have this inkling that this isn't the first time this has happened."

He grabbed a Rubik's cube from his shelf, and started fiddling with it. He could never solve those things.

"All those lapses of memory? Of course not," Missy growled. "Your subconscious is _very_ persistent."

"So tell me, what is this place?" Charlie asked, throwing his arms out to gesture at the room around him. "The 'afterlife'?"

Missy frowned, momentarily baffled. "Yes, that's exactly what this is."

"'Cause I might conjecture that this is more of a computer system," Charlie pointed at her with the cube. "A form of virtual reality."

"What," Missy scoffed, "like the one you got stuck in on Solos Nine, back when you started travelling the universe with the Doctor?"

"Uh… yeah!"

"No, it's not that."

"Because I escaped from that," Charlie exclaimed. "I got out."

"Not by yourself. And didn't you hear the bit where I said 'no'? _Boys_, honestly."

"I _will_ get out of this," Charlie exclaimed defiantly. "I will stop these monsters, and I will not let you wipe my mind again."

"Charlie. There's nothing for you to get out of. This is it. This is death. This – it's the afterlife for you silly little humans. Even if your conscious mind could leave this hard drive, you won't have a body to go back to. Remember this, Charlie," Missy snarled, "You're just a bunch of quantum numerals in a data core. I can switch you off" – she snapped her fingers – "like that."

Charlie coiled his arm back, and threw the Rubik's cube which as much force as he could muster.

It passed straight through Missy, and collided with his computer screen. A spider's web of shattered glass erupted across his desktop.

Missy's form began to flicker, glitching and distorting like the colours on Charlie's computer. All the clues had been there. She wasn't really there – she was a superficial projection. That meant something must be projecting her. Logical deduction: the only piece of technology in the room.

"Oh, very well done," she applauded him. "You've damaged my connection to the few points of data that is your existence in the Nethersphere. Do you know how long it will take me to fix?"

Charlie shrugged. "No."

"Seconds, probably. If that," she murmured. "But you know what? It doesn't matter. I was going to kill you, but I really can't be bothered now."

She turned away. "Keep your memories of the Doctor. I've got what I came for. This little ordeal with the Servants of Chaos will be resolved very shortly, and I will have no further need for you."

She glared at him. "Keep living your pathetic human life for all I care."

Then she vanished. The computer screen flickered for a few more seconds, and died.

_Damn, _Charlie fumed, heading for the door.

He had to find Nate.

If his friend was in danger, he knew Missy wouldn't lift a finger to save him. Charlie had to get to him first.


	10. Even in Death

Charlie ran.

He needed to find Nate – and save him. Stop those monsters.

He had quickly confronted his mum about where Nate lived, and managed to wrangle a string of numbers from her.

The numbers seemed more like a code than a house number; which made sense given the strange nature of the nethersphere.

The lost souls hadn't bothered him this time; they largely ignored him as he raced down the street.

The address was logical, like a library index, so it didn't take Charlie long to work out the district, building and floor where he could find Nate.

His trainers clanged on the metal steps of a walkway. Moments later, Nate answered the door, surprise evident in his eyes.

"Wow," Nate uttered, leaning nonchalantly against the doorframe. "I never expected to see you here."

"What do you mean?" Charlie responded, out of breath.

Nate backed away, allowing Charlie inside. "You never come over. You didn't visit before any of your resets."

Charlie hesitated, a wave of guilt trapping his breath.

"About that…" he paused for a moment. "I've had some time to think. I've worked some things out about these creatures. You're still seeing them, aren't you?"

"What?" Nate's eyebrows rose sharply and he threw Charlie a confused grin. "No."

"Nate," Charlie almost snapped. "Don't lie to me! Please don't lie to me again."

Nate held Charlie's pleading gaze for a moment, and gave in. His shoulders slumped as he sighed.

"Okay. Okay, yeah, I still see them."

They were silent for a moment.

"Maybe I can help," Charlie suggested.

"How?" Nate muttered, rubbing his eyebrows.

"I've faced monsters like them before," Charlie insisted. "I don't think they're after you. I think they're coming for me, and the Doctor."

At the mention of the Doctor, Nate visibly lost interest. He didn't want to know.

"No, Charlie, that's…"

"You don't believe the Doctor's real?"

"No…" Nate began to protest, but quickly gave up. It wasn't worth fighting over a lie again.

"No-one else thinks he's real," Charlie grumbled. "But I _know_ he is. And every time I remember - every time I believe he's real, they make me forget. That's why the resets keep happening. Because of the Doctor, and these creatures."

Nate leant against the wall, burying his forehead into the crook of his elbow.

"Charlie," he spoke softly, his voice muffled by the wall. "Do you really think this is what I wanted to talk to you about?"

He sighed again, his shoulders shaking as he drew breath.

"I wouldn't have shown you that memory if you were going to take it so seriously."

"But, I…"

"It wasn't…" Nate shot a glance at him.

Charlie couldn't quite read his expression.

"Answer me this one, Charlie. How do you feel?"

Charlie frowned. "What?"

"Now. Here."

Charlie shrugged. "I… I don't know."

Nate laughed, mirthlessly. "Hypocrite."

"Excuse me?"

"You tell me not to lie," he snapped. "And then when I ask you something, you don't tell me the truth!"

Charlie's insides were burning.

"Does it matter?"

Nate tore away from the wall.

"Yes! Yes, of course it does!" Nate yelled. "Just because we're dead doesn't mean anything's changed. I still think the same. I still feel the same.

"Just because…" Nate paused, his eyes softening as he looked at Charlie again. "Go be happy with Sam. You don't need me any more."

He waved Charlie away, channelling him back down the hallway.

"Go and do something more important. Go and live out your fantasies of time and space with _the Doctor_."

"You don't understand!" Charlie protested, desperately trying to summon the right words.

"Don't I?" Nate growled.

"I only wanted to travel in a time machine so I could get you back," he hastily explained. "I thought… I don't know. But it became so much more, I don't know how to explain."

Nate glared at him for a few minutes, his lower lip trembling. His voice broke.

"You're so selfish, Charlie."

Charlie felt a lurch in his stomach; a sickening feeling bubbling in the pit of his stomach.

"I'm… I'm what?"

"I… can you just go? Please?"

Nate blinked, and he was no longer looking at him; hiding his eyes as they began to shimmer.

Charlie raised his arms in frustration, his muscles tensing, fists chenching - his whole body burning as he realised.

He had hurt Nate. He was still hurting Nate.

"I… I'm really sorry Nate. I never… I never really…"

It wasn't enough.

And that was it. Their friendship was over.

He backed away, and a moment later, he found himself outside, in the dark and the cold of the the nethersphere.

Charlie traipsed back down the metal stairway, suddenly feeling very lost.

He found a wall to lean against, maybe cold corrugated iron, maybe rough concrete - it didn't matter - and he slumped into a corner.

He'd lost him. He'd lost him again.

He'd gone to the furthest reaches of the universe to get him back, but he and Nate had already lost each other long before Charlie met the Doctor. And it was all his fault.

He drummed a rhythm of despair and defeat into his forehead until it smarted.

He didn't need a fancy computer program to remember all the moments he'd spent with Nate. To relive the last year of his life, and to realise he had missed so many tiny hints that something was wrong.

He should have seen behind Nate's mask of jokes and wry remarks. Nate hadn't been okay.

He got bored with things after an hour. He spent less time with him. And he was so easily provoked; he'd fly off the handle at anyone who made an attempt to rile him.

But then, he had always been like that.

* * *

They'd be in the common room at break, and when Nate wasn't chatting excitedly away, he would sometimes sit in total silence, staring out of the window at the clouds drifting past, or the boys playing football. He became so wrapped up in his thoughts; Charlie often wondered what he was thinking about which swept him away from the here and now.

Sometimes, Nate had a really short temper. The other kids could wind him up so easily, and he'd get into an argument with them, and these were the moments Charlie dreaded.

On this particular occasion, Charlie had left him thinking alone for a few minutes, so he could talk to a girl in his physics class, whom he'd had a crush on at the time.

When he heard the raised voices, immediately followed by a hush as everyone stopped chatting to spectate, Charlie had that familiar sinking feeling of a lead weight descending into his stomach.

Charlie didn't catch what Nate had yelled at the trio of grinning guys, but he did hear their laughter afterwards.

Nate swore at them again, which only served to amuse them more.

"What the hell would you know?" he roared, his voice straining slightly, as he failed to supress his upset. He caught Charlie's eye, and tore himself away from them, his fists clenched, and his cheeks flushing a deep strawberry.

"All right mate, calm it. Jeez!" one of the guys mocked, struggling to contain his smirk.

This irked Nate even more, and he whirled back around, an uncontrolled look of rage bristling across his features.

"Shut up! I'm not your mate!" he screamed at them, prompting a couple of raised eyebrows. He cursed at them again, and another of the lads stood up, rolling up his sleeves, and squared up to Nate.

Charlie recognised him as a guy named Jamie, who was in his maths class. Nate wasn't as tall, or as strong as Jamie, but that didn't seem to deter him.

It was like watching a mouse fighting a cat – a cat that provoked and pawed at its prey before it struck it down.

"What you gonna do? Throw your books at me?"

Jamie turned with a smirk to his friends, who backed him up with a string of grunts and 'yeah's.

Charlie sighed. Nobody had ever let him forget that.

Nate retaliated verbally with some extraordinarily creative insults. He half expected a teacher to burst into the room, complaining about his language, of all things.

"Are they going to fight?" breathed Livvy – the girl in his physics class.

Charlie glanced at her, and saw that she – along with everyone else in the room – was watching the unfolding event with keen interest.

And no-one was standing up to help Nate. Not even him, Charlie suddenly realised

Why had he never done anything?

Maybe it was because he was as shocked as everyone else on the occasions it happened. As chatty as Nate was, he was also quite shy. It should have been so unlike him to erupt with anger, but he had always done that - for as long as Charlie had known him.

Maybe Charlie never intervened because he was just scared. He didn't have the courage to stand up and say something; even to defend his friend.

It was easy to imagine standing up and doing the right thing in his thoughts and in his dreams.

It was easy to stand and fight when you were on another planet light years away, when you could escape the consequences of your actions.

It was easy when the Doctor was there.

Nate shot one final glare at the guys, and skulked out of the room.

The noise of idle chat swiftly returned to the common room.

Jamie and his gang returned to their corner, as if nothing had really occured.

Livvy whistled. "Wow. _Drama…_"

"Hmm?" Charlie grunted.

"Why are you still friends with him?" she asked.

"What?" Charlie responded, a little stung.

What was that supposed to mean? Would she not have liked him because he was friends with Nate?

The question was asked offhandedly, like it wasn't really important. But it clearly was.

Charlie had always felt that Livvy was smarter than he was. They had really quite fascinating conversations in physics, and sometimes, Charlie had an inkling she was flirting with him - though he always shrugged it off.

He heard another angry outburst from the corridor. Nate yelling at some kid to watch where they were going.

"I'd better go and find him," Charlie mumbled.

He followed Nate outside, where he practically collapsed onto a grassy incline outside the sixth form building.

Nate's scowl disappeared when he noticed Charlie sit down next to him.

"You're not gonna shout at me too, are you?" Charlie asked, a little hesitantly.

Nate shot him a look.

"'Course not," he muttered with a half-smile.

"I… right." Charlie gathered his thoughts for a moment. "What was that about?"

Nate shook his head. "Nothing."

Nothing. It was always nothing.

It should have been obvious, but Nate never said.

It was only after Nate's death, that Charlie realised he wasn't really friends with any of the other kids in school. It seemed that nobody else really cared about him at all. Not even Livvy.

He had just existed.

Why the hell had he been so stupid?

What was he supposed to do now?

"I don't know…" he said aloud.

No, he _whined_. He sounded pathetic, and he hated himself for it.

He didn't know what to do.

He didn't know what to do with his hands, as he fumbled between grasping his hair and twisting his fingers together.

He would call Sam. His … _girlfriend_.

She was the only thing that was new. The only thing that didn't hurt.

Maybe they had a good relationship in the afterlife. Maybe he had trusted her.

Charlie pulled out his phone, found her name, and called her.

She answered pretty quickly.

"Hey Charlie. What's up?"

Her voice was pleasant, unconcerned.

Of course it would be. She wouldn't have known what was going on.

There was silence. He couldn't speak. His words were trapped.

"Are you okay?"

"Can… can you come and find me?" Charlie croaked.


	11. Before You I Didn't Exist

Nate was troubled.

This was all about Charlie. Everything was always about Charlie.

Normally, he didn't mind – usually, he was glad of it. Charlie was his best friend.

But now, with Charlie acting so strange - so fixated upon his story of the Doctor, it bothered him.

It could have been the accident; Charlie was struggling to adjust to life after death. It felt like he had changed, though. _That_ scared him.

Nate rubbed his eyes.

The room around him was growing dark; the artificial ambience of dusk creeping along the old wardrobe in his bedroom.

Hunched up in the corner of his bed, he was alone, watching the lights in the buildings above flicker and die.

Ever since Charlie had met Sam, Nate found himself drifting further and further away from him.

Charlie really wanted to be back in the real world, time travelling with his alien Doctor.

That was it. Charlie didn't want him in his life. Not really.

Nate shook his head, trying to empty his mind of thoughts about Charlie.

It was tearing him up inside.

Charlie was his friend. Charlie was his _only_ friend. If Charlie didn't want him… it confirmed his worst fears.

He had felt like a burden on Charlie his whole life. Now he was a burden to him in the afterlife.

Charlie always hung out with him at weekends, playing videogames so late into the night, they sometimes fell asleep mid-match.

Charlie had listened to all his petty rants about people and their stupid, pointless problems.

Charlie would put up with him and his stupid outbursts.

It was always Charlie.

_Charlie, Charlie, Charlie…_

They were the only memories he had. The only ones he had bothered to remember; the only ones his mind had retained. The only ones he could concentrate on enough to rewatch.

His whole life had centred on Charlie.

It was as though without him, Nate didn't exist.

"Focus!" the voices hissed.

Nate jumped, slamming his back into the wooden bedpost.

The creatures had returned, just as he had dreaded. Standing at the foot of the bed, breathing heavily, lingering in the darkness.

"Concentrate on those memories."

"_Why?_" Nate mouthed. "Why is he so important to you?"

"You'll have to speak up, we can't hear you," a female voice snapped sharply in his ear.

Nate jumped.

There was a woman in the room with them.

Nate had never seen her before in his life – yet one look at her terrified him. Was it the soulless eyes? They radiated an aura of hostility, of remorselessness.

He had never seen a serial killer before; looked them in the eyes. He knew he had now.

She had killed people, and she didn't care.

She twirled her fingers around the handle of her plum-coloured umbrella, idly passing the time.

"You've served your purpose," she said, the light sing-song humour dropped from her voice in an instant. She was deadly serious. "It's time to let the Servants of Chaos take your memories. A ninety nine percent data capture is good enough."

Nate frowned. He didn't understand what was going on. Was this a nightmare? It had to be, right?

He knew people still had nightmares in the afterlife. Charlie was having so many.

But it wasn't a nightmare. Every time he saw the monsters, he knew it was real.

"We will take the memories of Charlie Drake," the creatures snarled, shuffling towards him. "With them as our weapons, we will take our revenge against the Doctor!"

Nate couldn't move.

He was an idiot. Charlie had been right this whole time.

"Don't struggle," the woman uttered sternly. "You'll only make it worse for yourself."

Nate gasped, as a harsh glow split the room in half; a white crack running from the ceiling to the carpet, parting reality.

The disfigured creatures reached out with their frail tendril-like limbs. They seemed excited to try and touch the quivering light.

Deep wounds in the creature's skulls opened up, revealing the maggot-ridden flesh beneath. These wounds might have been mouths, but they looked more like bleeding gashes.

Nate could see a stream of his thoughts being pulled towards the shimmering light.

They were taking his memories – his memories of Charlie.

He tried to resist – to stop them taking Charlie from him. Stop them from hurting him. He couldn't.

"No!" he cried. _"Charlie!"_

_"Clara, Clara, Clara…" _the woman mocked him, rolling her eyes.

"Charlie!" Nate yelled.

"Whatever," she grumbled.

Glowing silver threads knotted together at the centre of the white crack, weaving a shape out of the air.

Then, materialising in front of his eyes, was Charlie.

* * *

Missy watched the scene unfold, carefully calculating all the possible eventualities. This little show had to go according to script, for the Doctor's sake.

"How can this be happening?" the boy muttered in shock, his gaze locked onto Charlie's form, rapidly taking shape in front of him.

The boy's memories were being extracted from his skull; a stream of data transferred straight into a new body, generated by the Nethersphere.

Okay, it wasn't really, but she had to make it look believable for the Servants of Chaos.

"I made him, just like I made you," Missy crowed.

Nate twisted his head towards her. It seemed to take a great deal of effort to tear his eyes away from Charlie. "Made… me…?"

"Yes," Missy sighed, "I've just booted up this simulation. You've only existed for about five minutes. I implanted all the data from a previous version of you. You only _think_ you've lived your whole life, because that's what you remember."

She laughed, showing him that she cared about him as much as they cared about the simulation of the bluebottle trapped in the net curtains. There were a lot of flies in the afterlife. It added to the ambience. Reminded everyone they were dead.

Missy produced a small mirror from her jacket pocket, and checked her eye shadow.

If one was going to be a drama queen, one might as well look good. It was one of the many benefits of suddenly becoming female. You could really glam yourself up for Armageddon.

Actually, Missy reconsidered, it had never stopped her before.

"You know," she simpered, "there's really no way to tell if you're real, or just a copy made up from half-forgotten memories."

The human was crying again. It was funny, really. So Missy continued, because that seemed to upset him more.

"And thanks to some extremely clever neural engineering, courtesy of yours truly - _ah-thank-you-very-much_ \- I've just recreated the mind of Charlie Drake from _your _mind, which I now have uploaded on my hard drive."

She gestured to the room around her. The Nethersphere, the hard drive she had nicked from Gallifrey, now containing the minds of every human that ever died throughout history, was an extremely useful bit of kit.

"…It's a bit of a drain on the processor, mind you. Look at the lag!"

Missy twirled round, and skipped away, watching the cascade of Missys' following seconds behind her.

"Very well done, Master," Charlie sneered, clapping slowly.

The boy's mock applause – that confidence – was enough to grab Missy's attention.

The voice did not belong to a human adolescent.

"Charlie?" Nate murmured.

Charlie rolled his sleeves up, and rubbed his hands together, excitement electrifying the space around him.

He ignored Nate, and took a step towards Missy. She narrowed her eyes at him, sizing him up.

"Yes, _Time Lord_, I know who you are." Charlie grinned. "Know this. You can't stop me. The Doctor can't stop me. The world crumbles under my majesty. The universe will tremble at my name."

Charlie's eyes flashed with an intense yellow glow; bewitching torchbeams homing in on her.

"I am the Mara!"

Charlie snapped his fingers, and the Servants of Chaos seemed to explode in a haze of dust. They were gone. They no longer existed. The Mara had destroyed them and everything they were in seconds.

"We can start with this 'Nethersphere' of yours," he spat.

Missy gasped.

A slight inhalation slipping through her lips was enough to signal her surprise to the Mara.

The memories of Charlie Drake contained a virus. He was infected with the Mara. Her realisation came far too late.

"Stop the simulation!" she screamed. The world ground to a halt.

Nate froze, his consciousness suspended in time. The fly buzzing in the window stopped, glued to the glass.

Charlie's body seemed to glitch.

Pausing the simulation wasn't stopping a creature with power like the Mara.

In a second, the boy's body was replaced with a writhing serpent.

Complex as it was, this world was only a computer simulation. Switching forms was as simple as selecting a new profile picture for the Mara. Hashtag: _#IAmGoingToKillYou_

Missy clasped the teleporter bracelet locked around her wrist, and the simulation dissolved.

Her conscious form was extracted from the hard drive – back in her palace of the dead.

She glared up at the grey sphere, its blinking red lights fading and dying.

The Mara was taking control of the Nethersphere.

The Mara. It had to be stopped.

Missy knew of the Mara, though they had never crossed paths before; Missy knew of the power it held. She knew that Only the Doctor had defeated the Mara before.

And when there's no Doctor in the universe you've created… someone else has to stop the monsters.


	12. The Flight of the Serpent

It was beginning to rain; dark clouds gathered at the centre of the Nethersphere, obscuring the city above. A terrible storm was brewing.

Charlie hadn't noticed any weather in the afterlife before, and decided that wherever he was, it wasn't heaven. Surely you couldn't be miserable in 'heaven'.

He drew his hood up to shield himself from the downpour, and pressed up against the wall as he waited for Sam. She said she would be with him soon - but he had no idea how long it would take her to find him.

His heart thundered in harmony with the drumming of rain against corrugated steel.

He looked at his phone, but there was no time to speak of. He kept doing it out of habit.

Somebody grabbed his hoodie.

Charlie uttered a cry of alarm as he found himself locking eyes with a predator.

"What are you?" Missy snarled, her rain-soaked hair wild in the bitter wind. "What destruction have you wrought upon us?"

"I-I… what?" Charlie stammered, struggling to break away from her grasp. Her fingers were like a vice.

Missy released him, and composed herself.

She straightened her lapels, and spoke calmly, but urgently: "Okay, Charlie. Something is _very_ wrong with you."

"Oh," Charlie grunted. He was tired of this woman tearing him down. "Is it, now?"

"How did you die?" Missy demanded, her sharp features twisted into a pale, venomous mask. "Tell me how you died."

"I… I don't remember," Charlie insisted. "I was with the Doctor."

"I _know_ you were with the Doctor." Missy yelled, lashing out at him.

Charlie stumbled back, and landed heavily on the ground. He fumbled in the dust for a moment, nursing his smarting cheek in shock.

"But _what_ did you do? And _how_ did you die?"

"Leave him alone, you vile serpent." A girl's voice - it was Sam.

Missy whirled around, glaring at her.

"And who the hell are you?" Missy snarled.

Sam smirked, unintimidated by Missy's almost animalistic growls. "That's my boyfriend. You have no business with him."

"I absolutely have business with him," Missy retorted. "You, on the other hand…"

She backed away for a moment, her eyebrows furled, mystified.

"I gave that boy the perfect backstory. _You_ weren't in it. So who the hell are you?" Missy challenged her, anger now turning to rage. "The love interest who's going to give him a _happy ending?_"

Sam waited for a moment, smiling, before giving Missy the satisfaction of a response. "I'll tell you who I am. I'm that one person in Charlie Drake's world who's going to get rid of the bitch interfering with his life. Be gone."

Sam shoved Missy aside, her patience wearing thin.

Missy tumbled out into the street, caught in the tide of lost souls churning down the street like floodwater down a storm drain. Sam raised her hand, and the lost souls around the renegade Time Lady reached out to grab hold of her, dragging her away.

Missy fought, swiping at the ghostly humans, turning them to dust. But there were so many of them. For each one she destroyed, a dozen more took its place. Within moments, she was gone; lost in the sea of human souls.

"Woah," Charlie uttered, breathless. "How did you do that?"

"The afterlife is a digital copy of our minds and memories," Sam explained with a warm smile, "It's really just a computer system. It can be manipulated if you know the cheat codes."

"I knew it!" Charlie muttered.

He looked up at Sam, the rain spitting in his eyes, making him blink erratically. She stood there, strong and beautiful; her soft features radiant, even in the gloomy orange streetlights.

"Can I trust you?" Charlie asked. He wanted to he _really, really_ wanted to.

"Yes. Yes, you absolutely can."

She took both his hands, and hauled him to his feet with a surprising turn of strength. He needed that. Charlie needed someone strong, because his legs were still shaking, and he wasn't entirely sure he was up to the task of walking.

"Um, Samantha…"

Sam's pencil-thin eyebrows dipped, confused. "_Samantha?_"

Charlie's breath caught in his chest. "I… I'm... isn't that…?"

That wasn't her name. He'd made a mistake.

"Sam's not short for Samantha," she laughed, "It's Samara."

She looked at him for a while, a sympathetic smile causing dimples to form in her cheeks. "Oh my god. All those resets - you've been getting it wrong all this time, and you were too embarrassed to ask, weren't you?" She chuckled again. "That is _so_ you, Charles."

_Charles?_

"That's why I'm so fond of you."

She clasped his head, and began to run, pushing through the lost souls.

Charlie trailed behind her. The rain bespattered his face, rendering him breathless as he ran.

She moved with such strength and determination, that Charlie began to understand how he might have fallen in love with her.

It was like that night he met the Doctor.

Sam had an aura like the Time Lord's: an authority, which promised safety and reassurance.

It was going to be okay.


	13. Without Witness, Without Reward

++ UNKNOWN CODE DETECTED ++

++ SYSTEM FAILURE IMMINENT ++

Missy gasped, as she collapsed onto the stone floor in the real world.

She took a moment to steady the beat of her hearts and wait for the pounding in her head to subside.

The Mara's defences had been so strong, she had fallen into some of her own traps in the Nethersphere. The onslaught of mindless souls had nearly suffocated her. Had she been a mere human consciousness, rather than a Time Lady with a healthy respiratory bypass system, she might have died.

Missy stood up, and opened out an interface panel concealed in the marble wall.

With a series of sweeping gestures, she began to attack the code that maintained the Nethersphere.

The Mara was spreading fast, corrupting every line of data; every human soul.

A thud ripped her attention away.

Another thud.

"No…" she growled, racing into the mausoleum.

One of the skeletons was hammering on the glass. Dull metallic thunks echoed throughout the chamber.

They were trying to escape. They were trying to break free from their tombs, but it was too soon!

The Mara was destroying everything. Everything she had worked for was falling apart.

She couldn't let her invasion plans have all been for nothing.

Missy roared in anger, reaching for her teleport bracelet again.

Red lights flashed anxiously, as the device panicked. There was no way to project her consciousness back into the system. The Mara was too strong - it would just expel her from the Nethersphere again.

She sighed, weighing up the multiplicity of options that were available to her. Calculating the probability of success against likelihood of survival…

It was not good.

The only way to guarantee a fixed location in the Nethersphere, which the Mara couldn't just cast out, was to wire her brain directly into the hard drive.

If the Mara were to defeat her conscious mind… it would result in almost certain death.

And if Missy were to fail… it didn't bear thinking about. It wasn't just a regular 'death' she could just shake off and recover from like the last ones.

There had to be an alternative.

Missy turned on her heel and stormed back into the control room.

Her thoughts laced with fury and bitterness, she loaded up a copy of the memories of Charlie Drake.

This boy was the key to it all. The Mara's hold on reality.

She examined his mind, his memories. Questioned him over and over again. Made him live out his life over and over as she probed every last detail. Every second spent with the Doctor. Every action and every decision that lead to his death at the fangs of the Mara.

How exactly had he died?

Had the creature stopped his heart? Had it torn out his mind? Or had it completely ripped his living form apart? Taken his constituent atoms and turned him into something new?

And if that was so, did the boy's mind still exist?

Missy had a hunch - and it was only a hunch - that the Mara needed the boy's mind intact in order to survive.

It was the sort of hunch the Doctor lived his lives on. It would have to be enough.

Could Charlie be restored?

Possibly.

There was a slim chance, if Charlie retained a link to what was formerly his mind and body - and it was still alive - she could download him again with a duplicate of his memories.

She would save him.

It might not help her survive, and it wouldn't stall the Mara for long, but it was her only option.

Missy pushed the buttons, transmitting a copy of Charlie's memories back to the point of his death.

Perhaps then, the Doctor would find a way to save him. And then, maybe, he would save her too.

Now it was time to enter the Nethersphere. Her digital afterlife had turned into hell. The minds and souls of the dead were screaming out in agony, as the Mara unleashed eternal torture upon them, and wiped out her army of Cybermen.

Missy pulled out a set of cables from the control unit, and pinned them to her skull.

In her last moments, perhaps she could do the Doctor proud.

Perhaps she could be… _good?_

* * *

**Author's Note:**

**I hadn't planned for this little side-step from the main storyline to pan out for this long - especially as there's no Doctor in it. But half a dozen rewrites later, here we are. More of Missy, actually trying to do "the right thing" - even if it is in her own self-interest. Perhaps her path to redemption began long before her time in the Vault?**


	14. Dreaming Deeper

Sam unlocked the door to her apartment. Charlie stepped through the doorway.

It was a small, modest place. A self-contained arrangement – more practical than homely. The walls were dark, draped with silken cloth, woven with traditional patterns. There were no windows or mirrors. No apparent luxuries: no television, no books, no pictures, no ornaments.

"What do you think?" Sam gestured to the rooms around her.

Charlie nodded, impressed. "I quite like it."

It was very different to _his_ house, and it was the sort of place that he would be comfortable living in: a single living room, with a small, tiled kitchen area. There was another door, presumably leading to a bedroom.

"Wouldn't I have been here before?" Charlie reasoned, throwing Sam a puzzled grin.

"No, you haven't, actually," Sam replied with a smile. "This is the first time."

Charlie frowned. He knew so little about her. He knew so little about the two of them.

Sam seated herself on a black leather sofa, and indicated that Charlie should join her. He did as instructed and leant back into the leather, remarking how comfortable it was.

She rested her chin in her hand, and stared at him.

"So, uh…" Charlie muttered awkwardly, wondering how to fill the void with conversation. "How did we meet? I don't remember. Obviously."

Sam touched his shoulder, and began playing with the folds of his hoodie.

"The doctor."

"I'm sorry?" Charlie uttered, freezing momentarily. Why was it always so triggering when someone mentioned his name?

Sam smirked. "The doctor's waiting room. You started talking to me. I think you felt awkward sitting in silence."

"Oh. Okay…"

"What's up?" she asked, shuffling a few inches closer to him. "Why did you call me?"

"I…" Charlie faltered, as the claustrophobic tangle of lies and bad decisions began to whirl in a confusing vortex in his mind.

"You probably think I'm crazy," he muttered dismissively."

"Everyone's crazy," Samara uttered chirpily, her eyes shining brightly.

Charlie nodded, and somewhat reluctantly, began to explain.

He felt it was okay, for once, to offload every worry, every mistake that had beaten him down in the afterlife.

He told Sam how no-one else believed the Doctor even existed. That Nate had pushed him away, and he'd just let him go. And he still couldn't let go of the fact that Nate had died – how he had died.

It felt like these crushing burdens were lifting, simply because she listened to him.

The way Samara looked at him… like she just_ understood_. It was comforting; the only thing returning him to a sense of ease.

"But Nate's here, Charlie," Samara spoke calmly, imparting her wisdom. "You're here with him now, even though 'here and now' is in death. You've got a chance to see him again, and talk to him."

"I'm trying," Charlie exclaimed, fretfully running his fingers through his hair. "I'm trying to work things out, but after everything I went through with the Doctor for him, I can't help feeling… lost."

"So you wanted your friend back, and you got what you wanted? Shouldn't that make you happy?"

Charlie nodded, his heart tugging at him. "I know. I _want _to be. I'm just… _not!_ It's like everything is wrong. It's meaningless."

He gazed dejectedly at the carpet, "And I think it's because it still hurts. What I did. What _he_ did."

He gazed into her dark eyes, drew in a shaky sigh. "And I still can't forgive myself for what happened."

Sam smiled, and caressed his hair. Charlie felt relaxed. Soothed.

"Why _do_ you blame yourself?" she asked, gently. "It wasn't your fault."

"I…" Charlie stuttered. "I know but… I still feel like it is."

The memory was still locked inside his mind, and he couldn't bring himself to face it.

He fell silent. Sam leant in, closer to him.

"Maybe you're wrong."

She smiled. It was a wicked smile. A mischievous smile, as though she had more on her mind than just talking to him.

It kind of startled him momentarily, but Charlie had to admit, he found it a little exciting at the same time – his heart was racing like mad.

"Your guilt is destroying you. You've locked it inside your mind. Buried it deep and refused to let it go."

There was a moment of intensity between them. Nothing apart from the two of them mattered.

"It hurts," Charlie cried, shaking his head. "It just hurts _so much_."

"Will you let me in?" Samara asked.

Charlie had felt so alone. But right now, he wasn't lonely. Sam was with him, and she made everything okay.

"Please… help me," Charlie breathed, whole-heartedly.

She stroked his neck, her face empathetic.

He knew he had fallen in love with her. Her dark, smoky eye shadow, accentuating the beauty of her eyes. Her silken hair, soft through his fingers. Her small, pointed nose – and her nostrils, which flared as she murmured suggestively.

She kissed him, drawing him in deeper. Deeper into her enchantment.

Charlie shrugged his damp jacket off, and Samara spoke softly.

"Nothing's going to hurt you here. I promise I'll keep you safe."

Charlie grinned, elated, as her lips brushed his once more.

Sam pulled her jacket off, and Charlie noticed the tattoo: a snake running the length of her forearm.

It reminded him so strongly of his terrible scars, that it alarmed him – snapped him straight out of the warm, dreamy feeling he had succumbed to.

"It's okay," she muttered, "Don't be scared."

His head muddled, Charlie wrapped his arms around her, and hugged her tight. He couldn't see her face, and she couldn't see his.

_"Charlie!" _the Doctor's anguished voice flooded into his mind.

The Doctor was still out there, wasn't he? In the real world.

Charlie grimaced in confusion, torn between pleasure and pain. Desire and ache. Love and hate. Belonging and loneliness. Life and death.

Polar opposites ripping him apart.

"_Every child throughout the cosmos will dream. And the dreams… will turn to_ _nightmares_."

He remembered that voice. He knew it. He had lived with it for what felt like his entire life.

The tiny voice that whispered anxious, dangerous thoughts was getting louder, more confident.

_"Samara!" _the Doctor, again, his voice laced with horror.

Charlie gasped, and Sam quickly kissed him again, leading his mind away from the disturbing thoughts.

Her palms caressed his body, and in that moment, he was completely willing to give himself over to her.

No…

This was all so wrong. He barely knew her. Samara was a mystery to him. She was fierce, controlling.

Suddenly, he didn't feel safe.

Nate hadn't trusted her. He could tell. And he was right not to. Charlie cursed himself. He had made a very dangerous mistake. He should never have ignored his best friend's gut instinct.

_"Samara…" _

Her voice. So familiar. So distant. A voice that belonged so far away, existed so long ago.

Something twigged inside his mind. In that second, it made sense.

It was her. She had killed him.

_"The Mara!"_

Charlie regained control, and pulled himself away from her.

"No," he uttered, launching to his feet, his whole body trembling in terror.

Samara's expression turned to stone. She knew what he was thinking. It did not please her.

She grabbed his arm, and he felt something slimy curl around his wrist.

He looked down in alarm; Samara's snake tattoo had come alive, peeling from her skin and coiling around his arm, restraining him.

"Don't leave," Sam hissed. "I can't promise to protect you if you go."

"I-I can't be here," Charlie uttered.

He broke away, drawing on a strength he hadn't realised he'd been capable of. Smashing through the front door, he began to run.

_"Charlie!"_ Samara screamed after him.

* * *

Charlie began to ascend; bolting up the metal stairwell tenuously attached to the side of the concrete block.

The roof of the building rose above the other industrial towers. More than ever, the streets resembled criss-crossing lines of data banks. The guts of a computer system hunched and contorting over itself.

Not so far above his head was the eye of the brewing storm, thrashing at the monuments reaching towards it.

It was a pulsing vortex of water at the centre of the Nethersphere; at the convergence of it all.

It was powerful; Charlie could feel its pull, tugging at his clothes, promising to take him away.

_"How did you die?" _He could hear Missy's voice, probing his mind.

Suddenly, a revelation hit him. He had been silently assuming that this world – the Nethersphere, the afterlife – wasn't real.

But it was very, very real.

_He_ wasn't.

His mind was just a copy. A shadow of Charlie Drake's mind.

He spread out his arms, as he felt his weight being lifted from solid ground. He was floating, captured in the heartbeat between flying and falling.

In the moments before the storm took him, he saw it all, in a fleeting glimpse.

The thing that had killed him was hurting others. This terrible creature was creeping into the nightmares of everyone on Earth.

Yet Charlie was here, in this data store, this digital afterlife – or wherever the hell he was.

He could see it all, and there was nothing he could do about it.

* * *

There are lines of code defining everything you see, dictating your perception of reality.

Everything you understand to be real is so, because it tells you it is real.

Sometimes code goes missing. You get a ghost in the mainframe. Sometimes a single digit out of place is enough to cause an error.

A single misplaced atom with a quantum influence on the universe.

There are shuffling shadows verging on your peripheral vision. There's something moving in there.

You don't know for sure what it is. It scares you, because you know it's going to kill you.

* * *

He had remembered. Everything.

Doctor Foreman and the hospital. Missy and the Nethersphere. The adventures with the Doctor.

He had lived a thousand lives, all in the space of a few seconds. He had made mistakes. He had remembered the Doctor in each one.

And each time, his life had been rewritten. Reprogrammed.

He was just a simulation. And the real Charlie, the original Charlie, was still alive. He knew it - he felt it. And he was in danger.

_Oh, god_. He'd remembered something else, too.

The moment that his life had been turned upside-down. The moment he'd been trying very hard to forget.

"Charlie?" It was Nate.

"Charlie, what the hell are you doing!?"


	15. Take It All Away

"Nate?" Charlie exclaimed, a feeling in his chest swelling and crushing his ribcage. "How did you get up here?"

Nate paused for a moment, shaking his head, throwing a puzzled look at the chaotic vortex looming over them.

"I… I don't really remember."

Charlie was about to move over to him - maybe to convince him to turn around. He didn't really know what was going to happen, yet.

Then he saw Missy; her heels clacking on the metal steps as she ascended to the roof.

"I should have guessed," he growled, unconsciously clenching his fists.

This world was a simulation; Missy its author. She could bring in whoever she wanted.

She knew he cared about Nate. She knew she would be able to apply pressure through him.

"I'm not here for you," Missy uttered, glaring at him in disapproval as he steeled himself.

"She's here for me," Samara said, closing in behind Charlie's ear so suddenly, he almost jumped out of his skin.

Charlie whirled around, backed away - placing a cautious distance between the four of them. It pushed him closer to the edge of the rooftop; closer to the pull of the storm.

He was already feeling on edge; the hairs on his forearms tingling. They were in the endgame now. Missy and the Mara had cornered him. Pinned down like a mouse among its predators.

Missy gestured towards the swirling vortex above them. She glared at Samara, a cruel glint in her eyes.

"Do you know what that is?"

"Of course I do," Samara replied with a smirk. "Charlie doesn't, though. Do you Charles?"

She snaked back towards him, her palms curling over his shoulders. It sent an immobilising shiver down his spine.

"And doesn't that frustrate him?"

Charlie tried to ignore her, but the intrusive thoughts kept coming, and kept striking him down.

"A lover of physics in a world beyond science. Nothing is logical. Everything is chaos."

"Shut up," Charlie growled.

He wrenched Samara's hands away, and stepped away, keeping a close eye on the edge of the roof.

What would happen if he fell? Would he die? Could you die a second time?

"At the centre of the Nethersphere is a null point," Missy explained. "A place where the internal dimensions are folded in to a single point, dense as a black hole."

"It looks like the source of a storm," Samara continued, competing with Missy for Charlie's attention. "It's a thing of beauty."

"Nothing can exist in that space," Missy said, her fingers splayed towards it, as if trying to grasp it in her mind's eye.

"But it's more like a plughole," Samara added. "A way out of the Nethersphere. There's nothing on the other side. Not even darkness."

A way to die, Charlie realised. A way to stop existing.

"Take a look at this world, Charlie." Missy uttered. "Look at the buildings. Look at the people, the souls, _burning_."

Charlie peered over the edge of the rooftop, a sudden lurch of vertigo strangling him.

The world was on fire. Flames erupted everywhere, as gargantuan black snakes begin to devour the population.

"There are nightmares destroying this world and the world before," Samara hissed. "I can spare one world, but I _will_ destroy the other."

Charlie peered at her, in revulsion.

"And what happens to me? I'm dead in the real world."

Samara shrugged. "You can be returned, if you wish."

"Your minds are linked," Missy explained. "The Mara exists wherever you are."

"Our destinies are intertwined..." Samara mused.

"So she doesn't exist if I don't?" Charlie guessed. He knew Samara and Missy knew exactly what he was implying.

"Sadly, it's not that simple," Missy responded.

Samara laughed.

"But think about Nate," she simpered. "He's here, but in the other world, he's dead."

Charlie locked eyes with him.

Nate was terrified, confused. He wanted to intervene, but he didn't know what to do.

"But if you stay here, she'll destroy him along with everything else," Missy stated sharply.

"I'll give _you_ the choice, Charlie," Samara uttered, a serious edge returning to her voice. "It's one world or the other. You can exist here – where Nate's alive. He's real. I will destroy the other world. It's your choice."

"But this is the afterlife," Charlie protested. "It's not even that! It's just a simulation. I'm just a copy."

"Your choice, Charlie…" Samara echoed.

"That's not a choice!" he yelled.

Samara's lips flickered with a grin.

Charlie cast a second glance at the vortex; but he was trying to keep a close eye on the three around him.

There was something more happening; something he didn't understand. It went beyond the four of them on this rooftop. It involved the Doctor, and the whole universe…

There was something he needed to do. _But what?_

"Charlie!" Nate tried to reach out - finding his moment to speak up.

"Stay back, Nate," Charlie warned him. "I can't tell anymore." His words were broken, lost in the fierce wind pulling at his hoodie.

Nate's lower lip trembled, struggling to contain his panic.

He wanted to run, but there was nowhere left to go.

Maybe that was it. Doctor Foreman was right. Sandra, his therapist, was right. He couldn't keep running away. He had to stop, and face his fear.

He turned to Nate.

"Yeah, I was afraid," he told him.

Nate frowned. "You were…?"

"Not just because I feel guilty about what happened…"

Nate bit his lip, but listened.

"That last day in school. By the lockers." Charlie's eyes were stinging him. "You were saying goodbye. And I... I..."

Nate's blue eyes were wide with dread, his black hair plastered to his forehead, raindrops running down his freckled skin. The sight made Charlie's heart heavy.

"I couldn't believe you'd throw our friendship away because of a stupid mistake I made," Nate moaned, tugging at his t-shirt sleeves.

"I know," Charlie muttered. "But you didn't make the mistake, Nate. I did."

Nate looked wretchedly at the bare concrete roof, unable to look Charlie in the eye.

"Nate. I really want to forgive you for doing what you did," Charlie insisted. "So I will. I just… hope you can forgive me?"

"Charlie…" Nate uttered, pained.

"Enough of this," Samara snarled. "Decide. _Now._"

"Ooh, I don't know," Missy interjected. "Why not… mull it over a little longer?"

"No," Charlie said, standing his ground. "I know what I have to do. I've got to save him."

Missy looked around. "Who?"

"Charlie," he said softly. "The real version of me is still out there. I know I am."

He clapped his hand over his mouth for moment, as he let his decision sink in. "We're just copies. But the real Charlie still needs help. I need to save him."

Missy raised her head, in a very slight gesture of acknowledgement. Approval, perhaps.

"And how do you propose to do _that?_" Samara mocked him.

"By stopping you," he spat, striding towards her.

"We're in this together, Charlie. If I rise, you rise with me. If I fall, you fall."

"Then maybe it's worth the fall."

"Charlie, please…" Nate was begging. "Please don't do this!"

His mouth was hung open, stunned.

Charlie shook his head, holding his arm out to keep Nate back. "Nate, I-"

In a flash, Samara was by his side, seizing his arm.

He tried to push her off, but Samara's hold on him was too strong. Their struggle grew more intense, and the two of them were locked in a scuffle.

Nate was pleading with them to stop, but he was too scared to intervene.

Missy hung back, watching hesitantly as the scene played out.

Samara swiped at his face, and Charlie leapt back, stumbling over the edge of the rooftop.

Before he could properly register what had happened, Charlie felt his stomach drop.

Samara's eyes widened; she was fixed to him, and they tumbled upwards together, as the world fell away.

He took a deep breath, and closed his eyes. This _would_ end.

Nate raced after him, stopping short at the edge, his hand outstretched as Charlie was pulled into the turbulent mass of black water.

The kiss of death was drawing him in, now. It suspended his breath in its cruel lips, but it would not bring his end.

Instead, he was drawn into the darkness. Into the dark places of the inside, where nothing made sense, but nothing mattered. It wasn't real. Nor was it a dream.

* * *

Missy watched as her plans drew to a close.

The battle for the Nethersphere was lost. It ended in flames.

The memories of Nathan Slate flickered and faded, forgotten.

The snakes were coming. The end of reality was coming. That claustrophobic last breath.

The breath that, despite everything, was fighting to the end.

The system crashed.

++DATA CORRUPTION++

++FATAL ERROR++

And finally, a single word:

VYPER

* * *

**_To be continued..._**

**The Doctor and Charlie face the Mara in the final part of the series: _The Fallen_  
**


End file.
